UX vs. the Climate Crisis: How to design for sustainability
Next Event: 2nd April 2025 18:00
For our online meetup on Wednesday 2 April, we have two fantastic speakers sharing practical actions we can all take to reduce the environmental and social footprint of the internet, both as designers and as advocates. Join us on Zoom for an uplifting and inspiring evening on a topic that’s close to all our hearts.
Agenda
6.00pm Welcome
6.10pm Decarbonising user journeys – James Chudley
7.00pm Break
7.10pm Sustainability is good for Business: The broader impacts of reducing carbon in digital services – Claire Robinson
8pm End
Decarbonising user journeys
“As an Environmental Science graduate and UX professional, I was shocked to learn that the internet is responsible for higher global carbon emissions than the aviation industry. Digital feels like an invisible and infinite resource but it is actually physical due to the infrastructure that drives it, such as vast, power hungry data centres.
The experiences that we design have a direct impact on the environment due to the emissions from the energy that is required to deliver them to our users. So as digital professionals we are actively (and often unknowingly) contributing to the climate crisis, but knowing what to do differently and where to start can feel overwhelming.
In order to design more sustainable experiences we must adapt our practice to focus on maximising the value we create from the minimum input of energy.
But what does this look like in practice and how can you get started?
In this talk I’ll share a simple and pragmatic digital decarbonisation approach that helps UX professionals to ‘think global, act local’ by focussing on minimising the carbon footprint of your highest value user journeys.”
About the speaker
James Chudley has been a UX professional for 26 years and works as an independent design consultant focussing on reducing the environmental impact of the internet.
His consulting experience spans the gamut of design practice from shaping projects and leading programmes of work, to leading the delivery of user-centred research, strategy and service design projects for clients across all sectors.
James co-founded UXBristol, is a regular speaker at international UX conferences such as IXDA, UXPA, UXCambridge, UXScotland and FOWD and is the author of ‘Smashing UX Design’, ‘Usability of Web Photos’ and ‘UX Leadership Skills’.
Sustainability is good for Business: The broader impacts of reducing carbon in digital services
Claire will outline how incorporating digital sustainability is good for business, delivering economic outcomes as well as delivering benefits for people and planet.
The talk is set in 3 main parts:
Sharing the scale of digital’s environmental footprint, and the scale of the opportunity for digital services to help address that
Sharing Net Positive thinking and our Net Positive manifesto as a framework to help deliver positive change
Introducing our Net Positive characters – a topline practical section with day to day interventions for each role type.
About the speaker
Claire Robinson is Director of Sustainable Business Consulting at Transform.
She brings over 20 years’ Digital Transformation experience to the table, having consulted for Public, Private and Third sector clients including DWP, DfE, UKTI, Cancer Research UK, NSPCC, Unilever, British Gas, Toyota Lexus, Barclays & Lloyds Banking Group.
Claire’s purpose is to help organisations to become measurably net positive across all relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Going beyond ‘doing no harm’, Claire works to embed purpose and holistic working practices across organisations so they can mitigate future risks and deliver more active goods to communities and future generations.
Passionate about implementing inclusive and sustainable business practices, her experience spans value propositions, customer experience and service design through to employee experience, operating models and business models, weaving pluriversal, circular thinking throughout.
A firm believer in partnerships and collaboration across industries and sectors, Claire employs systems thinking to solve complex, thorny problems to navigate a safe and sustainable path for future humans.
Seem to have just missed this, is there a recording? We are thinking about the same things, would love to hear the insights from this!