#100 Sustainable UX Design w/Jonas Thorsten
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We very often talk about empathy that we have, right? We try to understand problems and needs. We just need to begin not to think about our user only, but about all the other actors that we have there. We need to give them a seat on the table. And this is the core that is for all these different terms, sustainable UX or life-centered design or planet-centric design or humanity-centered design. Back at their core, this is what they all want. They want

not putting the user in the center, but seeing the user as a part of a bigger system. And in the system, all the other actors have the same right to be there and should be considered in everything that we build.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Honest UX Talks. My name is Anfisa, and today I'm not joined by Ioanna, but instead I'm joined by Thurston Jonas. And the reason why I invited Thurston today is because I actually love to open new doors to new niches or actually accent topics in design. We don't often bring guests here to the podcast, but if we do, we actually want to speak to someone who is, well, we can say expert, but somebody who's very involved in the topic. And I think Thurston is a perfect

person to me personally at least to talk about this topic which is called sustainable design or we can also say life-centered design which is something we'll I hope expand on when we start talking. My biggest hope of today's conversation is that after this episode some people also will learn more about SUX community and learn more about this movement so yes let's talk about it in a second.

A quick intro about our guest. Thurston, I would say you're an innovator, right? You're a consultant as well as your keynote speaker, you're a founder, but you can correct me if I'm wrong. You're now a founder of SUX Network. There is a community, there is a podcast. I'm sure there are some masterclasses. So there's a lot going on about the education space on this topic. So I'm pretty sure you have a lot to share.

here and I was just recently listening to your podcast. I've learned a little bit about the terminology, about the topics and things you care about. So this is something I'll definitely bring in here as well. Something to discuss. Did I miss anything? At first, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure and an honor to be a guest in your podcast. I think you've got pretty much of the things I do. I

I always say I try to use what we do in our work as UX designers and digital product builders and use these things, bring my part to making the world maybe a little bit better or saving the future, not only for us, but for future generations. Because there is a lot of potential that we have with all the stuff and our mindset. But there are also some changes that we need to make to our work. And lucky us, there are a few people.

who are working on these things and the community and the bubble is growing. You brought up some terminologies, right? So sustainable UX, life-centered design, planet-centric design. Don Norman calls it humanity-centered design. And the cool thing is all of them

back to their core, want the same thing. They want to evolve classic UX design to what it needs to be in the future, I think, and many others. So I'm happy to talk about this and to get into more detail on a lot of topics today with you. So thank you so much for having me.

Exactly. I was going to actually start from the terminology because when even listening to your podcast and the guests, I think everybody called it in different ways. There are some also behavioral design. Just recently, I listened to this episode about the purpose-driven design, which also falls into the picture somewhat. And it's just like a lot of new things. Obviously, we designers love to come up with new interesting terminology. Actually, I have a t-shirt which explains that UX designer is somebody who creates with all those smart words, holistic design, gross hacking or whatever.

First of all, let's try to debrief. What are those terms? Is there any difference? What's the term that you prefer going with and why, I guess? Since I'm the founder of the Sustainable Yags Network or Sucks Network, as we say, or SUX if you want to call it this way, I prefer this term, but it's

But it's not like that I think this is the right term and the others are not right. That's why I said all of these movements and ideas, if you break them down to the core, one very similar things. So UX design, and I'm in that field and job now for almost 20 years, I would say.

So the core of our work always was, and unfortunately still is, we are centering around the user. We are trying to build better experiences, better products, better apps, better websites, whatever, for our users. We try to understand our users, the needs and desires of our users, and try to fulfill them as good as we can, very often fighting other stakeholders like the business people or the evil marketing people or whomever. So we always thought that I would

say we are the good people, right? So because we are fighting for the user. But the problem with this approach and with all the tools and methodologies that we use is they are just centering around the user. But everything that we build, every digital product, every experience is always part of a bigger ecosystem. So whatever I build for my user affects other actors in the system and other actors can be other humans.

but also can be non-human actors like animals, like nature, like the whole planet. So for example, if I built a great app for grocery delivery, right? We have these, at least in many services, we have like Uber Eats or Flink or Gorillas. So all these services which try to make, to get groceries super simple and convenient for us, the users, right? They have a super nice app.

Nice user experience there. I can order and the only thing I need to do is getting up from my couch to walk to the door when the delivery rider is there to deliver my stuff. But who else is affected by this great user experience? Well, the delivery riders, which are very often not paid very well or very often still are not employees of these companies, but so-called self-employees, which is just another term for they are not social security.

security, for example, or the business models of these services are built for growth. So they do not need to make profit in the beginning. They just need to grow massively. Therefore, they are backed with a lot of venture capital. They make very low prices, means in our big cities, these small grocery stores we have in our neighborhoods cannot match these business models. And there are other actors that are influenced by this great service that we might build for our users.

And the problem is all of our tools that we use do not even make this visible. So it's just invisible. We are not looking at the whole system, but just at our user. And this is something we need to change in UX. And I think, and not me, but also many others think, hey, this is something we have to change.

maybe we have a very good basis to do so. We very often talk about empathy that we have, right? We try to understand problems and needs. We just need to begin not to think about our user only, but about all the other actors that we have there. We need to give them a seat on the table, actually.

And this is the core that is, I think, for all these different terms that we already talked about, if you call it sustainable UX or life-centered design or planet-centric design or humanity-centered design, back at their core, this is what they all want. They want not to think only about the user.

not putting the user in the center, but seeing the user as a part of a bigger system. And in the system, all the other actors have the same right to be there and should be considered in everything that we build. So therefore, I'm not a friend of debating different terms in terms of is this better or that better? I always say to people, hey, if you feel most comfortable with this term, fine, go with it.

Because the main thing is that we change the way how we think design and UX and product building in a way that we give all these other actors the consequences of our products visibility, right? Because that's what we are lacking at the moment. So therefore, there is no right or wrong term from my understanding. I know that it sometimes causes some confusion. So for me, with some of these other people, I'm very good friends, I know most of

these people who work, well, not other fields, but work on, let's say, Damien Lutz for life-centric design or Samuel Huber for planet-centric design. Well, we had Don Norman in our podcast speaking about his book and he uses humanity-centric design. We all want the same and there might be nuances that are a little bit different and that's totally fine because the main point is to change the way how we execute design, how we build digital products and that we

give these other actors visibility that we get into a conversation of maybe even redefining what is valuable and for whom. Because it's very often there is no 100% right or wrong. It's very often rather about how do we balance what we build? How do we balance it to the surrounding ecosystem?

right? How do we make it a solution that is good for every actor that is influenced or impacted and not only for one. To you people out there, whatever term feels the best for you, we all and back to the core want very, very similar things and there is no this one is better or that one is better. We all want the same. I think that

The terminology topic itself, well, first of all, obviously it's a conflict thing always. Everybody likes to fight about terms and definitely I'm not a fan of that. I think the idea why we as design industry is so like involved in this conversation is just because words matter a lot and that puts a lot of accent on where to drive your attention and how to focus in your conversation. What's the topic of the conversation focus? And it's interesting because I think sustainability focuses a lot more

more tactically on me or at least my perception whereas humanity center it sounds so big you know so massive it's like everything is involved with everything everything's connected to everything i really want to start with what does the sustainability means for you obviously this is a question you also ask in your podcast but i'd love to hear your perspective to really understand where do you focus in general in this conversation and maybe if you have any examples so our listeners understand specifically how do you use it and how do you define it

That's a very good question. And this discussion about what is sustainability, for example, is a huge discussion because I think for many people out there, sustainability is about climate catastrophe, resources and these things. And it's so much more. There are the sustainable development goals by the UN who are pretty good basis to get an idea of what sustainability is, because it's also about social equality, gender equality, good education, no poverty.

And so there are 17 goals. And I always recommend to people, hey, there is lots of information and it's a great point to start to get a feeling. So looking at these 17 goals, some of them are much more attached or relating to our work than others, but you will find some sort of relation with every goal.

So in my opinion, because you said sustainability is rather tactical, if you look at the sustainable development goals, I would see it differently because they are very strategic, I would say, because it's huge goals, right? And you have to act on a strategic level to fulfill them. So from my personal feeling, I like the term sustainability because it's, well, despite the fact that we have this problem with what do people understand behind the term sustainability,

It's a term everybody knows. So, for example, if you say, I think for many people, sustainability might work a little better than the term life-centered, for example. Not for me. I think both are equal. But life-centered sounds, for some people, at least what I hear from conversation, a little bit further away from their daily work. So a little bit too much, okay, yeah, I know we have to do this.

But how do I talk to my business stakeholders about it? If I come with life-centered, they're like, yeah, but we are not life-centered. We are profit-centered, whatever. So I don't think this is right. So there might the term, for example, I'm doing sustainable UX help more than the other.

But for some people, it's like this. For some people, it's like that. And I think the problem with what you said is with what do people see in a term that is a huge problem, but it's also an opportunity. Because if we have not only one term, but a handful of terms, for example, there is a higher chance that more people will feel at least attracted by one of the terms, right? Because it's an entry door for these people to get into this field and to get involved.

into these mindsets. And as I try to explain, the mindset is very similar for all these different terms. And that's the way I see it, actually. And that's why I like that there are a bunch of terms because they are entry doors for the people to get into this different mindset and they can choose what helps them most in their daily works personally, but maybe also in their conversations with other people. Yeah, I wouldn't make a difference in this one is more tactical or this one is more

strategic, but I see also an experience. Your point is that ask 10 different people and you will get eight different opinions on all these terms. But I try to see it rather positive than seeing it as a problem, I would say. I think that makes sense. I think in general, it's true that it almost sounds like a lies in it.

to whatever you are. Maybe there is some demographic bias in it, right? Some people, you know, when you translate words in English, they might mean something different. So people prefer the language that is more suitable to their environment. And I think it makes sense when whatever you basically want to, in a way, it sounds like we remove the friction by letting people choose whatever they usually would choose and then call it whatever the most

important ideas that you actually start caring about. Sustainability, life-centered design, humanity design, etc. Good point. I have a lot of questions, to be honest, trying to think where to proceed, honestly. But I would probably start something, what I think our listeners might be struggling with right now is trying to understand how to apply it practically. Like, yes, we all care about planet. We all care about the impact of our design. But

Like you said, right, in the conversation with stakeholders, I recently had this guest on a topic of accessibility design. And we talked a lot about like getting a buy-in. And I think in all sustainability design, as well as accessibility design, I mean, they're living in the same bubble of the problem. It's not a capitalistic thing.

It's good for the world, but where's the profit, right? And a lot of the times when you bring this topic, even accessibility to the conversation, it's not the priority. Let's think about it later. Now we need to put this feature out. We need to start bringing the profit. We need to align with the KPIs, whatever, whatever. What's your take on this? Can you bring maybe one example to give our listeners an idea about what's the value that they can, A, like think about? Like, what is it actually? What does sustainability mean in our society?

work in our daily life in the practice? And how can we consequently bring it to our stakeholders and position it as a value? Yeah, I'd love to hear your perspective because I know it's a big broad question, but I think the practice would kind of explain us a little bit better the point of it. Very good question. And question that is always

ask very often. Let me start with the business side, because part of our work in, let's say, trying to be a little change to this world is not only changing our way to design, but also designing new narratives and changing existing narratives and changing existing narratives that are maybe wrong. And so these narrative that sustainability as well as accessibility are not good for business. I always say, hey, well, in my opinion, this is not true because

Just one very simple example. So as I said, sustainability has many different pillars. So for example, you could say accessibility is part of sustainability and you could find it in the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. Let's speak about energy consumption and climate change. And so if we build digital products that are

more climate friendly in terms of they are less data heavy, less data needs to be stored, less data needs to be transported. That's all saving energy actually, which means less carbon is emitted because we need less energy. And this is definitely a huge problem. All the data centers that we need to run our internet and our digital services, they have an enormous energy consumption, right?

bigger than the airline industry. They would be, depending on which number you look, but seventh or fifth or whatever biggest country in the world if you compare the internet to countries in terms of carbon emissions. So for example, making your website half the size of what it has been before saves a lot of data, especially if you have millions of users. And you could easily save 10, 20 tons of carbon per month with a huge website with millions of users per month if you optimize that. So

Where is the business side now? Well, if you need less storage, you need less service. And well, talk to your desktop people and ask them about pricing for Amazon AWS instances, for example. It's expensive. And you can save a lot of money if you need less service. So that is a very direct connection. And so IT people are our friends actually in this conversation because they will immediately understand.

For example, if you optimize your image formats that you use on your websites, you can save a lot of money because you just need less server storage to store these pictures. So it's not only good for the environment, it's also good for the business. So that's a very simple narrative.

Then what I always say is that if we look at our supermarkets and if I compare that with, let's say, 20 years ago, everybody will, at least it's my feeling, I always get the agreement by people I talk to about this. There is much more green color used in the supermarkets than it has been 20 years ago, right? Everything is painted green now.

And nowadays, it might still be enough to paint your stuff green, right? So greenwashing, ha ha ha. Still, the demand for more sustainable products is there and it is growing. And numbers show that even people are willing to pay more money for sustainable product over not so sustainable product.

Nowadays, it still might be enough to paint your stuff green. It won't be enough anymore in two or three years, I guess. So it's also market opportunity if you are more sustainable to gain new customers actually for your service, for your product. Third thing is if we look here in the EU,

So sustainability is a huge topic. They have these, what they call the new green deal. And there is these corporate sustainability reporting directives, CSRDS, which affects digital services as well and will affect more and more. So what I say to people very often is the pain many companies feel this year in, oh, now we need to take care about accessibility because there are regulations that demand me to do so. And, oh, why haven't I done before?

Well, it's not like everybody knew, but whatever. Still, the companies feel this pain. And I always say to them, hey, look at this situation and you will have the same situation with digital sustainability in a few years, at least in the EU for sure. So you can start preparing now or you will have the same problems we have now in three to five years. That is the business side that sustainability is already a business case and sustainable.

As I said in the beginning, it's important for people like us to tell this narrative in conversations with teammates, with colleagues, with clients, with other stakeholders to make people understand, hey, it is a business site. So and then you were asking how to apply that to your work. So I could elaborate briefly.

And there are different things you can do on different levels. So I always see and actually the whole Sucks Network started with the idea to build a playbook for sustainable UX. And finally, I'm working on finishing that and hopefully pretty sure making that available for the communities.

So the important thing is if we look at a product design process, there are different phases and even different kinds of UX designers. I mean, there is not the role of a UX designer, right? There's a UX designer can be many different roles, depending if you're a junior or senior, if you're more in research, more in very tactical, practical design or more in strategic parts, etc., etc.,

You can do, and you should do as a product team or a design team, do something in every step of the design journey. So that's a very important message that it's sustainability is not about at one point in your design process, you add sustainability, but you have to weave it in every step of the design process. And sustainability

That begins in the very beginning in the research strategic part. So one thing that I personally love doing is a very simple tool that I build and I call that needs to consequences mapping. And what it does is it tries to connect this one thing we work so much with, and that's the user needs and the business needs.

We know that from our daily work and try to connect it with the direct and indirect negative consequences of a product or service that we built, right? So which of my user needs has what kind of negative consequences? And because that brings me in a situation where I can try to balance these and

and can at least compare, okay, what's the price for this user need? And maybe for this user need, we are paying pretty high price because this is a basis for conversation and discussion with other stakeholders. And there are many other tools in Life Center Design. There's a bunch of tools you can use in this phase to create these understanding and transparency. Then another tool that I love that is maybe a little bit further in the process, we all know user journey mapping and we use that a lot actually.

And that is a pretty nice tool that we can hijack for sustainability because we can just add additional layers of information and could say for each step in the user journey, which other actors are impacted? What is the negative impact on an environmental level, on a societal level? Then we could add another lane and say, okay, what would be opportunities, ideas to tackle this?

So that's, from my understanding, a pretty good tool to get from these very high level, more strategic point of view. Okay, what are the general negative consequences, et cetera, bringing it down to smaller chunks that are much easier actionable, I would say. Because then if you do this in the user journey and identify negative impacts, and then maybe even have ideas how to tackle them, you could easily put them into an

classic impact effort metrics and say, okay, what's the things we want to do first? So, and these two things work for all kinds of sustainability, right? And then there are things on the very actionable tactical level where you design the design, where you build the wireframes.

So there are many things how to make your design more carbon friendly, right? In terms of colors. So on OLED displays, dark mode uses a lot less energy than white mode. Again, you have to balance it to accessibility issues, right? Because dark mode is white font on black screen might be hard to read, but there is fonts, pictures, picture formats. What sizes of pictures do I use? On websites, these things,

Hero videos that are just there because they look good. They are so bad for the environment. And honestly, we don't need it. For a website, this one hero background video could make 75% of the carbon impact of this page, actually.

So this is something we could do, or we could try to positively nudge our users and help them to make more sustainable decisions. So let's say for an e-commerce website where I order something, why isn't the default option always that my order will not be delivered to my home door?

but to the next delivery hub, which is in a big city. Like, so I'm from Hamburg. The next spot where I can pick up my parcel is like three minutes walking distance. So why isn't that the default option always? Because if it would be the default option, more people would choose it for sure. And there are online stores who do that already. Maybe not in the U.S.,

My gut feeling says me. But yes, I know. You're right. It depends on where you are, definitely. And it also depends even here in Germany, if you live somewhere in the countryside, it might not make sense because there's a difference if I go by car to the next post office or if a post car comes to me, right? I think I said this before. Very often there is not this one right answer. It's rather balancing it, finding the right solution for the right situation and for the right context. But the thing is, there are many opportunities, right?

to design more carbon-friendly directly in the design, but also to help users to make more sustainable choices. So what I try to say now is no matter where in the design process you are located, there are various things. And I just talked about very, very briefly about a few things that you could do. There are many, many others that you can do on all steps of the design journey. And it's not always easy. It

Sometimes it's about in the first step, creating this transparency and visibility about negative impacts. And maybe that won't change anything in your current project, but maybe in the next release of that service or something, you have a basis to discuss and say, hey, won't we put in maybe an additional KPI about what's the carbon impact of our digital product, right? It's very often it's about starting these conversations and having this one water drop. If you do it again and again, we'll make a hole in the stone. I don't know how to say that in English, but

It's a marathon. It's not a one-time thing that you do and then you're done. It's rather doing it again and again, laying a basis, working towards making sustainability default in your whole design process. That's a huge mantra for us at the Sux Network, for example. That's always the goal to make it default in the whole design and maybe not even design, but the whole product building process. But there are things that you can do no matter where in the design process you are.

I think this is brilliant. And I like that you are talking also about the examples because immediately, you know, the classic design brain, I start immediately imagining the world and everything. When you're speaking about this default, right? That we always go for this default, default, whatever is the most convenient thing. Now, sometimes convenient is not the most sustainable and everything. So companies obviously has to wire it as their company DNA choices, values, et cetera, to be a part of the journey. But at the same time, I feel like

with the current moods and movements in general in the tech industry, AI could also play a little bit of a role there. I personally hope that one day AI can help us personalize experiences. And like you said, right, in Germany, the default could be the nearest hub, but in the US, maybe it was the most sustainable option. I don't know, but possibly shared driving something. I have no idea. But the thing is, AI could definitely help and

optimize those experiences, obviously, to different groups and roles. So I'm excited to see where it goes. And I love to have this conversation right now because I think the moment when we still have so many options, we have a lot of new potential as AI. Bringing sustainability to the conversation could lead us towards that better. You know what I mean? So I just hope that somebody will take it into account as well moving forward. But

having so many great examples that you just brought right starting from as simple as optimizing your website so saving money for the servers generally i think like what could really help at least to me as somebody who's a newbie in this area who's not super involved right now with all the community events with all the innovations with all the discussions even regulations i have no idea honestly what's cooking right now especially in the ui au but

What I'm thinking, because remember when we started the conversation, I was not recording it yet. I pointed out that you have those cards in the background. I immediately imagined as a designer who might be interested in this topic, it would be so practical and useful for me to have some sort of cards to point out how can you apply on different touch points in your user journey, whatever. We always use those different choices, right? Card that could help you understanding where it could come in place, right? Because sometimes...

We think, okay, yes, we have all the good intentions, but we have no idea how to apply it, how to make it practical, how to bring this as a part of the conversation with your stakeholders. Because let's be honest, designers right now are overwhelmed. And this is one of the biggest problems on the market. We have way too many niches, way too many things to care about. Stakeholders, business, accessibility, UI, so many different things. Everybody's saying you need to be expert in this and that. And AI is now playing a role. And it's just overwhelming. There is a lot of politics going on in

companies or even in the world. And so it gives a huge toll on the mental health, I believe, in the design world. And so for me, I think the more accessible it is to get something, the easier the entry curve into this world. So yeah, immediately in my design world, connected adults with the cards. And I imagine how you can apply this. For example, right now we're thinking about this persuasive communication.

car design, you know, when you have different tactics to apply and nudge users towards the better choices, the more human-friendly choices, same could be applied for the sustainability. I immediately think, what if we give them options that are more sustainable in the right places? But you need to think about them, right? You need to have them top mind. And that's, I guess, the biggest struggle right now with every new paradigm and new concept.

Anyways, bringing it back to actual conversation. One topic I still had in mind is brought up partly that, you know, in accessibility, we have those regulations and they seem to be top down pushing things to start changing, right? This is a part of conversation I had with our guest in accessibility topic, but I don't love this, but it obviously is effective.

that we are pushed to start obeying and start changing the capitalistic narrative into making it more accessible to everyone. And we have it already in Europe. It's mostly now almost a must, like it becomes almost like a default option. You have to really have accessible experiences, especially for the public companies. But

How about the SUX? Like, how about the sustainable user experience? You said that in three, five years, maybe we will have more regulations. What about those regulations? What should be we afraid of? What are the things that could come into play? And so what cards can we designers start keeping in mind and kind of start playing with those cards? Like, yeah. So what are the things we should be afraid of coming from regulation side of things?

So what is definitely coming is this whole carbon emission side and resource saving side. So what happens, well, and I'm not an expert in regulations as well, but what happens with these corporate sustainability reporting directive is that, so in carbon emissions, we have these scope one, scope two, scope three emissions means what are direct emissions, what are indirect emissions in other parts.

And all this digital stuff is not part of scope one, but of scope three. And so far in all reportings that big companies need to do, they only had to report on scope one emissions. So this will change, means the digital side and the digital impact on carbon emissions by this immediately jumps to the radar of all these companies who need now.

to report this and we'll see, oh, how much carbon is my digital infrastructure actually emitting? So this will definitely be the first thing that will happen or that is already happening. And the good thing is it's way easier to measure or at least estimate the carbon impact of my digital infrastructure than the social impact on...

other actors in the system, right? And that's also sometimes the whole carbon and resource part is like a good entry door to the whole sustainability field, I would say, right? Because this can be measured somehow. You have a direct connection to, okay, if we make it

More energy efficient, we need less data. We save server space. It costs us less money. Great. People will understand that. So it's a way easier narrative than, I don't know, we shouldn't build any more Flink or Uber Eats services because honestly, it's just...

because we are lazy and don't want to go for a walk to the supermarket anymore. That's way more different too. I see it always from this side that we need to act on different levels. So in our concrete work environment, what can we do there? Well, energy efficiency will be the easiest thing to discuss with all kinds of stakeholders. Still, we should work on it.

on the other end, on the social impacts. And maybe we have to do that on various levels. So, well, we can create the transparency in our work and hopefully start conversations and discussions about that. But we also need to evangelize on many other ends. So I do a lot of talks and workshops all over Europe, actually.

I travel a lot by train. I try to do everything by train, which is also part of the narrative, right? I try to show people, hey, you can go by train everywhere in Europe. It just takes some more time, but it is possible. And what I see is it's so important to have these conversations. And I never have been in a room where the whole room after my talk said, yeah, great talk, but we knew all that already.

And sometimes I hope for that this will happen, right? Because it would mean, yeah, okay, everybody knows about this now, but this is not the case. The case is that still the bubble, and I think in our pre-conversation, we were talking about the bubble as well. So the bubble of digital sustainability and sustainable design and UX is still smaller than ever.

the main design bubble, right? And there are so many people that still do not even need to be convinced, but need to be told about these things and about these dependencies and about that the digital world, though we cannot really touch it, always has a physical impact on the world out there. There are still so many people that need to be told about this. So this is something where we all can connect, no matter if we go to a conference and do a talk or

talk at a meetup about this or just talk in a conversation with somebody about this. This is as valuable as building a more energy-friendly version of the website I'm working on. So that's the way I try to see it. There are things where we can directly act, actually, and where we have direct connections to the classic capitalization

capitalistic KPIs. And there are others where the connection is not this strong and where we need to act differently on maybe on other levels. And still, I'm convinced that also regulations will come on this end. And we can see this in German. It's called the Lieferkettengesetz. And I have no idea how to translate it. So what it means is that we

When I have a product, where from do all the parts actually come in? And it needs to be visible and transparent. Is it supply chain? Something along those lines? Yes, supply chain, something, law. So where do all the parts come from? And it needs to be...

made transparent and needs to be reported. And so that goes exactly in the direction, right? So we want to have more or better social standards for the products that we build. And at least politics are slow. That's the bad thing, but they try to do something. So regulations are coming on this end as well, or that will affect us to build more or better experiences for everybody that is affected by this. But

As I try to say at the moment, it's rather evangelizing for, or making transparent these negative impacts on other people, for example. Because what I experienced, and it doesn't matter if I speak to designers or digital leaders or developers. So I speak to product managers. I speak to all kinds of people and do talks at all kinds of conferences. And most of them are open to these things. It's not like that. I have never experienced that the majority in the room said,

Yeah, but it's no business case. Come on. Right. So most of the people are really touched by these things. Most of these people have not thought about these things. And first step is to tell them and to make this visible in our product design process. And so

That's why I like the idea of not creating a bunch of new tools, but try to enhance the existing tools that we have, because we use them anyway. We use a user journey in our process. Our stakeholders know that. They have seen that. And if we just add one or two additional layers, we could just say, yeah, that's the way we do it now.

For now, just, well, have a look and we are not doing something with it right now, but maybe we can think about it the next time, et cetera, right? So we could just introduce it without even asking for permission because we use the user journey anyway. And then let's add these additional layers and use this as a conversation starting with other stakeholders with the goal to maybe put that into an additional KPI sometime later.

That's the way I see it. The typical UX answer, it depends and it's complicated. Always opt in for it depends. I bet I do like the visibility point. I think in general, it applies to everything in the world. If you want to start changing things, you need to start talking about it. It needs to start being visible. It needs to become top-minded.

Not always it will be actionable immediately. I do believe that many countries right now, especially in developing economies, some people will hear this conversation and think like, oh my God, this is impossible in my company. And I can even imagine this in my company right now, even though we are a European company. And so I do think that

Every company has their own priorities and it will be hard sometimes to squeeze it in something else, especially if you're like in a fast paced environment when everything is needed for yesterday and everything. But at the same time, I do like this point that we just need to start having those conversations. It will not immediately change.

But I do feel like it's just a matter of becoming a part of the story, right? The more we talk about it, the more it becomes a part of our just general narrative. As you were talking about divisibility, I did remember that we already talked about different puzzles in this whole story, right? The terminology, the regulations. How do we get this journey started for every regular company? I remembered...

weirdly the story that I actually studied ecodesign, but I completely forgot about it because I was a student 11 years ago. I was taking an Erasmus program, which is a mobility program for students in Europe. And I took one year in Italy where ecology is a big topic. I didn't care about it. I didn't know about it. I'm from Ukraine. Eastern Europe doesn't really care about the things we have. A bunch of other problems happening. Well, at least 11 years ago, it was for sure like that. But

When I had this course in my Erasmus, we actually studied equity and I completely forgot about it up until this conversation. And the reason why I forgot about it is because when you finish your university, you are jumping into this, again, capitalistic world where everything is run by economy and we need to succeed and the growths, the classic economics.

Yeah.

And actually, when I worked in this mobility program kind of project in Italy, we had a project called EcoDesign. And that's why I remember this term supply chain, because it was a part of the conversation. We were building some sort of ecological fridge with the natural resources. It was fun because never heard about it, never imagined it. And I love to hear that it now comes back into narrative and starts coming back as a big talk.

Because if you study this theoretically, it's good, it's fun, it's exciting. But at the same time, when you're thrown into the real world, it's often out of equation. I guess this is my huge preview to a quick question I have for you now. Who do you think would be the key early adopters in the industry? And how can we theoretically expect them

this to become a part of the narrative in the smaller companies, especially thinking about developing economies, startups, scale-ups, where things are always like in a quick pace, right? Especially outsourcing agencies who also have other priorities in mind. So my guess is, obviously, you are from Germany, where this is a part of the conversation. In many other economies, it's not about...

a part of the conversation. In some countries, it might sound like very weird and crazy to bring this into the topic when you have a bunch of other priorities. So who do you believe would be the early adopters? And how can this lead to become a global movement where everybody cares about sustainability in their design process?

It's not so easy to say exactly these, for example, industry, part of the industry will be early adopters because I think there are good examples in many different industries on all levels, big grown-up companies, small startup. A very good example is Patagonia and many people have heard about this. And

I think for all of us, it's important to also talk about these good examples that are there, right? So for example, if I look at the whole design award scene and we are giving so many great awards for a great design for the next blinky, blinky, shiny, shiny website, app, blah, blah, whatever. Sorry for sounding a little bit annoyed, but we should celebrate these things.

services much more that are designed eco-friendly, that are designed social friendly. And there are some, but the main awards, maybe they have the small subchapter of sustainability something, maybe, maybe not. We all need to celebrate these good examples much more like Patagonia, like here in Germany, Tomorrow Bank, which is a fintech startup, a bank that

tries to do things differently. And so there are examples on many levels and it's on us to bring more attention to them, I would say. And this will definitely lead to more. I mean, there are also a lot of, also here in Germany, a lot of people that are quite resistant to these things and that even deny that we need to change something, right? I mean...

That's the huge, maybe it's not even a discussion anymore. It's a fundamental battle that we have for what is right and for what is wrong. So I think it's important to focus on these who already do good and then to focus on these that we can change or help changing and think about it as a step-by-step process, right?

I always say to people, hey, do not look at what's the final goal, because I think I will do these things until the end of my life. We will never reach a point where we are done. So what we have to do is look at what can I change within the next month, within the next six months, within the next year. And in terms of narratives, where can I have an impact?

Where can I help to change something? What are the companies I should talk about at the moment? Who are the people or companies I should ask the right questions about these things? And well, maybe who are the other companies that maybe need some more time and then I maybe shouldn't waste my energy on them. So to answer your question, there are good examples on all levels in almost all industries. We should talk much more about this.

I like your first point, honestly, because I think leading by example is a very powerful thing we don't think about a lot. And from the bottom up perspective, from the design perspective, I think it's on us as designers to bring this to those awards or whatever, like things that make things more public, right? It's on us to push it and say, hey, where is this kind of award? Why don't we celebrate this? And this is my mentality of Ukrainian because

For us, that's how we change presidents and everything because, you know, we're a country, we have our story, but that's how we change things. You just have to bring us up, bottom up. You have to say, why we don't celebrate this? And you need to stand on that. Otherwise, nobody's ever start thinking about it, right? The bigger the movement, I think the bigger the change as well and the faster the change is. So I love this point, honestly. Anyways, I know we're at time, but I really want to hear a little bit more about what's coming up

on your side. I know you're saying you're working on the guidebook. The courses, obviously, everybody should be encouraged to listen to your podcast, which is called SUX. We'll attach all the links in the show notes. But what

what we can expect and what people can hear or read more about you now. We have this huge resource database. And so bringing this playbook to life with tools that I developed by myself, but also with curated tools from other people that are like, okay, you want to apply it no matter where you are in your process. Here's a guideline that helps you because that's what many people actually ask for.

So what is important, and as I said, educating people and teaching them. So what I do, for example, I do masterclasses for design teams sometimes. So it's like half day or full day masterclass, which works pretty well because it's,

Super intense, but you can teach a lot in one day and works pretty well with a design team. At the moment, I'm finalizing an individual course for designers, an online course, how to become a sustainable UX designer. That is a huge topic. On my side, what's also super important, and you named that before the whole field of AI, because from my opinion, we are hailing that a little bit too much and we are like using it for everything. And it's not like we shouldn't use it, but we should question it a little bit more.

more often. I actually yesterday had a recording with Tom Greenwood and we had a nice discussion about AI and the negative impacts of AI and what it does to us as humanity and how we should see it, etc.

super deep and intense. And so that's something I'm building a workshop format at the moment with the goal, how can we decide where and how to use AI? How can we question what we get out of it? So how can we use it in a responsible and ethical way?

Because I think that is super important because I see so many conversations out there that says, yeah, AI solves everything and makes everything easier. And it's just the solution for everything. And I think that's a little bit dangerous. Because, I mean, just look at the environmental impact of AI. It's like the problem we have with digital anyway, and this is...

exponentially growing, right? So the energy that we need to run all these data centers that run the large language models for our generative AI, that is huge. The freshwater consumption of all these data centers is enormous. I read this number some time ago by Gary McGovern that he said by 2030, all of us in the

developed world by 2030 will have a digital doppelganger that needs, out of all the data that is related to us, that needs as much fresh water as we need to live in one year. That's insane, right? And the thing is, most of this data is not used at all. So, and this problem will grow exponentially with AI. So that's a huge topic I'm working on as well at the moment. And

in terms of the community. I mean, the whole SACS community started during Corona times. It was from the beginning a global thing, a virtual thing. And just last month, we started our first local chapter in Copenhagen because that's important, I think, also to bring people together. I mean, still, we can do so many things digital. Still, it's a different thing if we get together personally in a physical space.

So getting to a physical level with the community is an important thing. Hopefully by the end of the year, we have a bunch of local communities and taught a lot of more people, gave a lot of more workshops. So come to our website, to our sources and find out about all these things.

Thank you. This is awesome. I'm inspired by seeing how many things you're doing. It's honestly unbelievable. But I definitely will attach all the links in the show notes. And I just hope at least 10 people from this conversation get excited about this topic and also get to start learning, hearing, participating in the workshops, etc.

So yeah, with that being said, thank you so much. We really appreciate you coming today, helping us to understand it better and hopefully kick off the conversations even further. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you and goodbye, everyone. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.