What is Sustainable Design? Sustainable design creates long-term solutions and helps societies ensure the well-being of their people and harmony with the environment for generations. Designers reduce waste by making products that are recyclable, compostable and even better – endlessly reusable. They might also create a manufacturing process to reduce or remove carbon dioxide emissions. As the most significant challenge of our age, many of these designs relate to environmentalism or combatting climate change.

One of the world’s leading User Experience and design experts, Don Norman, help us understand how to design for a better world. Spoiler alert: sustainability is not enough. Play Showvideo transcript 1. 2. 3. Table of contents

1. What is Sustainable Design?
2. What Makes a Product Sustainable?
3. Is Sustainability Enough?
4. What Does This Mean for Digital Products?
5. How Can UX Designers Make a Difference?
6. Learn More About Sustainable Design What Makes a Product Sustainable? A sustainably designed product or service is one that considers the entire lifecycle of the product during development, from manufacturing to disposal. A truly sustainable design is optimized for reuse. A physical product might use recycled materials, or be manufactured in a plant that doesn’t use fossil fuels to become more sustainable. After the product is created, it should be useful for a long time. It should be designed in a way so it can be reused or repaired, or biodegrade once it is done being useful. A sustainable service should provide what the user needs while reducing the use of non-renewable resources. Ride-sharing apps are an example of a service that ultimately reduces the need for every individual to own a car. This has the potential to reduce waste since fewer cars are necessary. Options to carpool can also reduce gasoline use, further increasing the sustainability of the service.Carsharing services such as GoTo Carsharing seek to reduce car ownership using the Transportation-as-a-Service model. © GoTo Mobility, Fair Use Is Sustainability Enough?****© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0 As important as sustainability is, it’s clear that the effects of climate change are already happening. In that regard “sustainability” is not enough, since that effectively means keeping things the way they are. We have to stop creating products that create great harm to the planet. We have to create products that can last for a long time and that can be repaired and upgraded when they become outdated or stop working. Alternatively, we can design as nature does. We can design in a way where the waste itself is a valuable substance that can be reused by nature. Think of an orange. It’s protected by the peel (not a plastic wrap). Once we peel the orange the peel will naturally decompose and function as fertilizer for the planet. What Does This Mean for Digital Products? User experience designers who work solely on digital products might think sustainability is irrelevant for software or applications. That is somewhat true, but new industries like crypto mining have demonstrated that even purely digital products can have unforeseen ecological impacts. Designers can develop energy-efficient apps that work on older devices to reduce energy consumption and slow the obsolescence of older devices, which causes more waste. Dark mode vs. light mode. © Apple Inc, Fair-Use Even something as simple as a “dark mode” for the UI of an app can reduce the amount of strain on the battery of a smartphone or tablet, thus reducing energy consumption. If everyone who uses the app uses dark mode, it can have a significant impact. How Can UX Designers Make a Difference? Traditionally, UX design has primarily focused on human-computer interactions. However, we can scale up the practices of design thinking, user research, product design and interaction design to even larger projects. Now more than ever, designers are called on to rethink infrastructure, education and transportation to create more sustainable models on a national or even global scale. Sustainable design processes include reforming energy-efficient infrastructure or designing sustainable buildings for housing. The founder of User Experience, Don Norman, has coined the term “Humanity-Centered Design” to give a name to this movement and inspire designers to design a better world for all of us. Learn More About Sustainable Design If you want to learn more about sustainable design, take our course: Design for a Better World with Don Norman. Norman, Donald A. Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered. Cambridge, MA, MA: The MIT Press, 2023. Read more articles and essays by Don Norman on JND.org. For an example of a large-scale sustainable design problem, read about the circular economy. The UN’s 17 Goals for sustainable development Literature on Sustainable Design Here’s the entire UX literature on Sustainable Design by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place: Learn more about Sustainable Design Take a deep dive into Sustainable Design with our course Design for a Better World with Don Norman .“Because everyone designs, we are all designers, so it is up to all of us to change the world. However, those of us who are professional designers have an even greater responsibility, for professional designers have the training and the knowledge to have a major impact on the lives of people and therefore on the earth.” — Don Norman, Design for a Better World Our world is full of complex socio-technical problems: • Unsustainable and wasteful practices that cause extreme climate changes such as floods and droughts. • Wars that worsen hunger and poverty. • Pandemics that disrupt entire economies and cripple healthcare. • Widespread misinformation that undermines education. All these problems are massive and interconnected. They seem daunting, but as you’ll see in this course, we can overcome them. Design for a Better World with Don Norman is taught by cognitive psychologist and computer scientist Don Norman. Widely regarded as the father (and even the grandfather) of user experience, he is the former VP of the Advanced Technology Group at Apple and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group. Don Norman has constantly advocated the role of design. His book “The Design of Everyday Things” is a masterful introduction to the importance of design in everyday objects. Over the years, his conviction in the larger role of design and designers to solve complex socio-technical problems has only increased. This course is based on his latest book “Design for a Better World,” released in March 2023. Don Norman urges designers to think about the whole of humanity, not just individual people or small groups. In lesson 1, you’ll learn about the importance of meaningful measurements. Everything around us is artificial, and so are the metrics we use. Don Norman challenges traditional numerical metrics since they do not capture the complexity of human life and the environment. He advocates for alternative measurements alongside traditional ones to truly understand the complete picture. In lesson 2, you’ll learn about and explore multiple examples of sustainability and circular design in practice. In lesson 3, you’ll dive into humanity-centered design and learn how to apply incremental modular design to large and complex socio-technical problems. In lesson 4, you’ll discover how designers can facilitate behavior-change, which is crucial to address the world’s most significant issues. Finally, in the last lesson, you’ll learn how designers can contribute to designing a better world on a practical level and the role of artificial intelligence in the future of design. Throughout the course, you’ll get practical tips to apply in real-life projects. In the “Build Your Case Study” project, you’ll step into the field and seek examples of organizations and people who already practice the philosophy and methods you’ll learn in this course. You’ll get step-by-step guidelines to help you identify which organizations and projects genuinely change the world and which are superficial. Most importantly, you’ll understand what gaps currently exist and will be able to recommend better ways to implement projects. You will build on your case study in each lesson, so once you have completed the course, you will have an in-depth piece for your portfolio.Design for a Better World with Don NormanDesign for a Better World with Don NormanCloses in1day12hrs33mins40**secsbookedView Course All open-source articles on Sustainable DesignOrder by:                                          Most shared in this topic                                                                                           Latest UX literature in this topic                                  Use More Meaningful Measurements in Design and in the WorldUse More Meaningful Measurements in Design and in the WorldWhat we measure and how we do it significantly impact people’s lives. Often, we measure certain things just because they • 328 shares • 8 mths agoRead articleRecycling is Not Enough. Let’s Design for ReuseRecycling is Not Enough. Let’s Design for Reuse“We live in the age of technology and luxury, but we also live in the age of waste,” Don Norman explains. In this video, • 304 shares • 8 mths agoRead articleHow Designers Can Help Companies Design for the Circular EconomyHow Designers Can Help Companies Design for the Circular EconomyThe circular economy sounds like a simple idea to resolve the crisis we face as a species. A circular economy generates • 302 shares • 8 mths agoRead articleSustainability Is Not EnoughSustainability Is Not EnoughSustainable design. Sustainable fashion. Sustainable living. We often hear these terms in marketing campaigns and popula • 299 shares • 8 mths agoRead articleUse Circular Design To Reverse HarmUse Circular Design To Reverse HarmNature is circular. Nothing ever goes to waste. The banana peel we discard degrades into nutritious compost for plants. • 272 shares • 8 mths agoRead article Open Access – Link to us!**** We believe in Open Access and the democratization of knowledge. Unfortunately, world class educational materials such as this page are normally hidden behind paywalls or in expensive textbooks. If you want this to change, cite this page, link to us, or join us to help democratize design knowledge!