The new Beginning — Vol #3 of the SUX Newsletter
Welcome back everyone!
It’s been a while since our last edition. Many other things were going on that we didn’t manage to continue the Newsletter in the last year. But, we are re-starting now and from today the SUX Newsletter will be released once a month, speaking about Sustainable UX, Digital Sustainability and also Responsible AI.
What can you expect to read?
- A personal impulse about why we have so many different names for what we do: Sustainable UX, Life-centered Design, Planet-Centric Design, Humanity Centered Design and if this is helpful or not?
- Four handpicked reading- and resource-recommendations
- Our latest episodes of the SUX Podcast with Don Norman
- The latest news from the SUX Network, events we hosted, talks and workshops we gave, new episodes of the SUX Podcast as well as updates on SUX templates and the upcoming SUX Playbook
- A Recap of the SUX Co-Design event in Copenhagen in March
- Upcoming public events where one of us will speak or facilitate a workshop
- A small sneak peak to some of our upcoming plans
- And we round up with a little “Did you know”
Since we are catching up some months, this edition of the SUX Newsletter is a bit longer than it is supposed to be in the future. But I promise, it’s worth it. 🙌
🌿 Thought of the month: How should we name what we do?
In this section we will speak each month about one certain topic, something wehave recently thought about or worked on. This month I want to speak about naming:
In the field of sustainability and design we have a bunch of initiatives and wordings for quite some time now. Life-centered Design, Sustainable UX, Planet-Centric Design, Humanity Centered Design and even more. Others say that in the definition of Human-Centered Design Sustainability, etc. are already part.
And sometimes I sense a discussion about which one is the “right one” or the “best one” for the future or what is right in general. And that is sad. Because in my humble opinion the core is always the same:
We have to move beyond user-centricity. We must no longer focus on our users only, but see them as one part of a complex ecosystem and take into account the impacts of our (design-) decisions to the whole ecosystem and not only the user.
And no matter if you look at Life-centered Design, Sustainable UX, Planet-centric Design or Humanity Centered Design — you will find this thought at the core of all of them. Even in the definition of Human-Centered Design this is already fundamental principle.
My personal point with the term Human-Centered design is the fact that though the right things are in the definition it has not been used correctly over the past by most people. User- and Customer-Centricity pushed the core fundamentals of HCD aside and so most often HCD is executed user- or customer-centric. Therefore I think it helps to use other terms to push change and point out the problem of user/customer-centricity.
So no matter what term fits you best. No one is wrong. I personally even think it helps to have all these terms. It helps targeting slightly variations in how and what to do and even more important: it helps to spread the word.
So, I mainly use the term Sustainable UX, because it felt good to me. But, if you feel better with Life-centered Design that is als wonderful. And I still want to invite you to join the SUX Network. Because this is important for all of us. We can use different terms, but still we have to unite. The more people get together, the stronger we become on our road to change design and UX in a way that it no longer creates harm and even more helps creating a better future.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments. 🙌
📚 Recommended Reads and Tools:
Each month we will share recommended reads or tools for you. And we will always try to find am mix of thought-provoking articles, interesting facts and practical tools.
📘 Book: “World Wide Waste” by Gerry McGovern
This is not a new book, but still much more people should read it. When we speak about digital sustainability we must not only speak about optimizing our designs, but also about how we can produce less data. Most of the data we produce is NEVER used. It is useless data. But millions of servers a are running, using energy and fresh water (for cooling) to store all this data. Here are just a few facts about data from the book:
- Around 90% of data is never accessed three months after it is first stored, according to Tech Target
- 80% of all digital data is never accessed or used again after it is stored, according to a 2018 report by Active Archive Alliance.
- Businesses typically only analyze around 10% of the data they collect, according to search technology specialist Lucidworks.
- 90% of unstructured data is never analyzed, according to IDC.
- 90% of all sensor data collected from Internet of Things devices is never used, according to IBM.
📃 Article: Will AI be good for the environment? by Tom Greenwood
As I am working on the environmental, ethical and social implications of AI by myself at the moment, I am reading a lot and this article by Tom Greenwood, which is a summary of an online debate of Chris Lloyd-Jones and Dawn Geatches arguing that AI is not good for the environment, and Joyeeta Das and Maria Perez Ortiz moderated by Tom, is a pretty good start for anybody to think about AI and its impacts as well as potential opportunities in terms of sustainability. I personally think we need much more critical discussions about AI and how we use it. Or as Tom said so well in the end: “For me, this debate about AI and environmental sustainability is about more than just how much energy this technology might consume. It raises some big questions about who and what we are as humans, our relationship with our environment and what type of future we want.” (and a little sneak peak: Tom will be one of our next guests at the SUX Podcast)
Two recent recommendations directly from the SUX Resource Database:
🖍 SCOPES — System Concious of Potential Energy Savings by Hanna Jansson: A Figma template that provides guides for designers in making more energy efficient decisions when incorporating elements such as images, videos, text, colors, etc., into their websites.
🖍 Neurodiversity Design System by Will Soward: The NDS is a coherent set of standards and principles that combine neurodiversity and user experience design for Learning Management Systems.
Find more than 100 (and growing) various resources, tools, frameworks, talks about sustainable UX and design but also digital sustainability in the SUX Ressource database: https://suxnetwork.notion.site
You developed a tool, or found an interesting resource? We invite you to add it to the SUX database.
🎙 Latest episodes of the SUX Podcast:
Bavo and me had a bunch of wonderful guests throughout the past year. For our latest episode we had the honor to welcome Don Norman to speak about how to design for a better future and why we need to shift from Human- to Humanity-Centered Design. We spoke about morning walks, elaborated on Humanity Centered Design and why Dons latest book was a different one, when he started writing it. We discussed about the importance of curiosity and made the connection between design, business and decision making and how it relates to sustainability. We spoke about sustainability and why it can only be the beginning and why it is good to be wrong sometimes. And we discussed how human centered design is wrong and why and how it needs to be enhanced and changed. Listen to the episode here and also check out the latest episodes below.
- with Don Norman: Changing Design toward a better world
- with Damien Lutz: Life-centered Design
- with Xhensila Reci: Purpose Driven Design + Bonus Episode
- with Elizabeth Rosenzweig — World Usability Day and a Usability Revolution
📯 News from the SUX Network:
- 🎙 Green IO Podcast — Together with Sylvie Daumal I was invited to the Green IO Podcast to speak about how Systemic Thinking can empower sustainable design. → Green IO Episode #32
- 📖 Page Magazine — I was interviewed for the german digital design magazine PAGE and shared 8 principles for a planet centric design process.
- 📕 SUX Playbook — the whole SUX Network started with the idea to create a playbook for Sustainable UX. We are currently structuring and determining how to publish and make it available for the community in the best way. So, stay tuned. More about the Playbook to come in the next edition of the SUX Newsletter.
- 🎓 SUX Course for Designers — at the moment we are preparing the course “Become a sustainable UX Designer” — we will release a full curriculum and dates soon. Find first information and the signup for the waitlist here: Course “Become a sustainable UX Designer” Also, stay tuned for special one day in person Masterclasses we plan in different European cities.
- 🎓 SUX Masterclass for Design-/Product-teams — for design teams we developed this special Masterclass format, which teaches Sustainable UX within a condensed 6 hour format, with lecture and practical parts. For more information and a detailed curriculum please get in touch: Email us
💫 RECAP: SUX Co-Design Event in Copenhagen
On the 19th of March SUX and me in collaboration with UX Copenhagen, Stefanie Kruse and Anna Ratkai invited the local community and UX Copenhagen conference participants to a Co-Design UX-Workshop. The topic was e-commerce and Sustainability. Stefanie, Anna and me enhanced the classic User Journey method with sustainability layers to identify negative impacts along typical e-commerce user journeys and in the second step to develop ideas how to do better and create more sustainable e-commerce user-journeys. The results will be published soon. And if you want to learn more about the methodology or have us conduct the workshop for your event or your product feel free to get in touch and Stefanie, Anna and me are a happy to support you or facilitate a whole workshop for you.
🏘 SUX Local Chapter Copenhagen — the Co-Design event in Copenhagen was also the kickoff for the first local Chapter of SUX. Long year SUX ambassador Stine Ramsing will take over the lead of the Copenhagen chapter. Stay tuned for news about the next event.
📆 Upcoming Events:
Find below a list of upcoming events, where I speak. You will be at one of the events as well? Drop me a message and we can have a coffee/tea and a chat. ☕️
April:
- Talk at Digital Design / UX Next Conference in Munich: “Beyond Human-Centered Design: 10 Tipps, um für eine nachhaltige Zukunft zu designen”, 16th/17th of April (german)
- SUX Community Event in Amsterdam together with The Craft, 22nd of April, Details to follow soon (english)
May
- Keynote at UX Camp Bremen: “Beyond User-Centricity”, 4th of May (german)
- Workshop at DDX Conference Munich: “Sustainability and Ethics in the convergence of AI and UX”, 11th of May (english)
- SUX at UX Budapest + Masterclass “Sustainable UX”, May/June, exact date tbd
Later in the year:
- Masterclass “Sustainable UX” and Opening Panel at UX Connect Aarhus, 11th/12th of June (english)
- Talk at Prompt UX in Hamburg, “AI in UX: Can we be trusted with the magic lamp”, 1st/2nd of October (english)
- Talk at World Usability Congress in Graz, “10 principles for responsible & sustainable AI integration in UX”, 15th-17th of October (english)
🌿 Our Goals for 2024:
As you have seen, many things were and are going on. And there is more to come in our plans:
🏘 SUX Local Chapters— we started in Copenhagen, more cities are about to follow soon. Stay tuned. Or are you interested to setup a local chapter in our city, no matter where in the world? Feel free to get in touch and we are happy to discuss details with you: Email us
🎊 SUX Live Events — we plan to do return with global live events, discussing one certain topic per event with thought leaders from around the world. Stay tuned.
💸 Funding — we are looking for partnerships to support our work and to be able to provide even more to you, the community. You want to support us or setup a partnership? Please get in touch: Email us
📕 Resources and Trainings—we want to provide more resources, tools, workshop-templates and training for you. We will release the first version of the SUX Playbook soon and setup the SUX Academy to provide more trainings for you, including online and in person trainings and as an extra: special outdoor-based trainings.
💡 Did you know:
“Surging digital data use by 2030 may cause each of us in the developed world to have a “digital doppelganger,” with our internet use consuming as much water as our physical bodies. But much of the stored data is junk.”
Gerry McGovern, Sue Bradford — Source
Thank you for reading all the way down here. 🙌 The next edition of the SUX Newsletter will be published beginning of May. Until then, join our community (Slack , LinkedIn ) and keep changing the word: We all can have an impact. No matter how small it seems, every action is better than doing nothing and will make an impact. 💚
And if you have any feedback, please reach out to me in Slack or on LinkedIn. 🙏
See you,
👋 Thorsten
Founder of the SUX Network & Co-Author of the Web Sustainability Guidelines, Keynote Speaker, Sustainable UX Trainer, Digital Sustainability Trailblazer. Get in touch if you want to work with me or book me for a talk. And follow me on LinkedIn, where I share frequently tipps, resources and thoughts about Digital Sustainability, Responsible AI and Sustainable UX.
🌐 Our website: https://sustainableuxnetwork.com/
📧 Get in touch: info@sustainableuxnetwork.com
