Designing for Sustainability

Designing for Sustainability

by Tim Frick
Released August 2016
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781491935729

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

Pixels use electricity, and a lot of it. If the Internet were a country, it would be the sixth largest in terms of electricity use. That’s because today’s average web page has surpassed two megabytes in size, leading to slow load times, frustrated users, and a lot of wasted energy. With this practical guide, your web design team will learn how to apply sustainability principles for creating speedy, user-friendly, and energy-efficient digital products and services.

Author Tim Frick introduces a web design framework that focuses on four key areas where these principles can make a difference: content strategy, performance optimization, design and user experience, and green hosting. You’ll discover how to provide users with a streamlined experience, while reducing the environmental impact of your products and services.

  • Learn why 90% of the data that ever existed was created in the last year
  • Use sustainability principles to innovate, reduce waste, and function more efficiently
  • Explore green hosting, sustainable business practices, and lean/agile workflows
  • Put the right things in front of users at precisely the moment they need them—and nothing more
  • Increase site search engine visibility, streamline user experience, and make streaming video more efficient
  • Use Action Items to explore concepts outlined in each chapter

Publisher resources

View/Submit Errata

Table of contents

  1. Dedication
  2. Preface
    1. Goliath and Frank: A Holiday Tale
      1. Connecting the Dots
        1. One Designer’s Impact
      2. Click Clean
      3. But Isn’t Virtualization a Good Thing?
        1. Renewables versus efficiency
        2. Awareness and the consumer problem
      4. B the Change: Why I Wrote This Book
        1. B Mighty
    2. Who Should Read This Book
    3. How This Book Is Organized
    4. Let’s Go!
  3. 1. Sustainability and the Internet
    1. What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    2. A Greener Internet
      1. Building Sustainable Solutions
    3. Sustainability Defined
      1. Systems Thinking and Sustainability
    4. Sustainability in Business
      1. Identifying Efficiencies
      2. Life Cycle Assessments
        1. Setting goals and scope
        2. Inventory Analysis
        3. Impact assessment
        4. Interpretation
        5. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol
      3. Benchmarking
      4. Marketing, Branding, and Greenwashing
      5. Innovation and Disruption
      6. LCAs in Action
    5. Sustainability and the Internet
      1. The Jevons Paradox
      2. IoT
      3. Runaway Page Growth
      4. Video Streaming
      5. Virtual Reality
      6. Data Centers
        1. Moving to renewables
    6. Virtual LCAs
      1. Software and Visual Assets
      2. Design and Development
      3. Server Uploads, Network Downloads
      4. Interaction
      5. Disposal of Data
        1. Code obsolescence
        2. Investing in updates
    7. Conclusion
    8. Action Items
  4. 2. A Sustainable Web Design Primer
    1. What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    2. Sustainable Web Design
      1. Web Sustainability Standards?
        1. Mindset shift
      2. Sustainable Web Design: A Framework
        1. More sustainable components
        2. Findability and content strategy
        3. Design and user experience
        4. Web performance optimization (WPO)
      3. Potential Barriers and Workarounds
        1. Awareness
        2. Adoption
        3. Workarounds
    3. Conclusion
    4. Action Items
  5. 3. Sustainable Components
    1. What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    2. A Greener Apple
      1. The Challenges of Being a Truly Green Web Host
        1. The aged grid
        2. RECs versus renewables
        3. To grid or not to grid?
        4. Good company versus good marketing
    3. Other Sustainable Components
      1. Environmentally Friendly Workspaces
      2. The Stakeholder Model
      3. Sustainable Mission Statements
      4. Lean/Agile Workflows
        1. Going over the waterfall
        2. The cone of uncertainty
        3. Agile methods
        4. Agile resources
      5. Software Frameworks
      6. Open Source and Sustainability
        1. A more sustainable community
        2. Hacking the climate with open source
      7. Web Standards
    4. Potential Barriers and Workarounds
      1. A Tale of Green Hosting Woe
        1. Reliability
        2. Customer service
        3. A strange twist
        4. Green and good: winning big
        5. Green hosting, greener Internet
    5. Conclusion
    6. Action Items
  6. 4. Content Strategy
    1. What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    2. The Content Conundrum
      1. Toward More Sustainable Content
      2. Defining the Rules
        1. Measurement is clutch
        2. The content audit
        3. Information architecture
      3. Story Matters
        1. Leading by example
      4. Video Content
        1. The story diet
        2. Video workflows
          1. Development/preproduction
          2. Post-production
          3. Distribution
        3. Video compression
        4. Accessible video
      5. Agile Content: A More Sustainable Solution?
        1. A scientific approach
        2. Preparing over planning
        3. Lessons from Agile content strategy
      6. More Sustainable Search
        1. SEO and sustainability
        2. Search on site
        3. More sustainable social strategies
    3. Potential Barriers and Workarounds
      1. Awareness
      2. Shifting Sands
    4. Conclusion
    5. Action Items
  7. 5. Design and UX
    1. What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    2. Users Versus Life Cycles
      1. Beyond Users: The Entire Experience
      2. Sustainable Design Workflows
        1. It’s about collaboration
      3. Agile Practices, UX, and Sustainability
      4. Practical, Tactical
        1. Define your users, define their devices
        2. Lean personas
        3. Lean wireframing
        4. Content patterns and page briefs
        5. Display patterns and component design
        6. User stories
        7. Avoid dark patterns
        8. Give it a Rest
    3. Visual Design
      1. Ye Olde Design Comp
      2. Style Tiles
      3. Color Choices
      4. Fonts and Typography
      5. Imagery
        1. Which format?
        2. Compress those images
        3. Use CSS sprites
        4. Inline images
      6. Print Styles
      7. Measure Success
      8. Accessibility, Sustainability, and Design
    4. Web Standards
      1. Mobile-First
      2. Progressive Enhancement
      3. Responsive Design
    5. Potential Barriers to Sustainable UX
    6. Conclusion
    7. Action Items
  8. 6. Performance Optimization
    1. What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    2. Performance Counts
    3. A Balancing Act
      1. WPO Defined
      2. Optimization and Collaboration
      3. Performance versus Maintenance
      4. Libraries versus Frameworks
        1. Frameworks
        2. Libraries
    4. Speed Is Just One Metric
      1. CMS Optimization
        1. WordPress
          1. WordPress Plug-ins
          2. Your WordPress theme
          3. Comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks
        2. Drupal
          1. Your Drupal modules
          2. Your Drupal theme
    5. Performance Rules
    6. Speed, Reliability, and Version Control
      1. Autoprefixer
      2. ShareThis, AddThis, DumpThis
      3. Comments and Page Bloat
      4. HTTP/2 and Performance
    7. Workflow Tips
      1. Lean/Agile Workflows
      2. Standards-Based Development
      3. Validating Your Work
    8. Accessibility and Sustainability
    9. Potential Barriers and Workarounds
    10. Conclusion
    11. Action Items
  9. 7. Digital Carbon Footprints
    1. What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    2. Estimating a Carbon Footprint
      1. Calculation Criteria
    3. Proposing a Framework
    4. Ecograder: A Case Study
      1. Vision and Goals
      2. The Business Case
      3. The Methodology
      4. Green Hosting
        1. Green hosting methodology
        2. Performance optimization
        3. Google PageSpeed insights
        4. HTTP requests
        5. Shared resources
        6. Findability
        7. MozRank
      5. Design and UX
        1. Mobile optimization
        2. Use of Flash
      6. The Process
        1. Research
        2. Competitive analysis
        3. Sprints
        4. Design and UX
      7. Creating Ecograder Content
      8. Promoting Ecograder
      9. Results
    5. Ecograder Benchmarking
      1. Findability/SEO
      2. Design and UX
      3. Performance Optimization
    6. Conclusion
    7. Action Items
  10. 8. A Future-Friendly Internet
    1. What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    2. Future-Friendly Web
      1. Conscientious Companies
      2. Green Hosting
      3. Hardware
      4. Education, Incubation
        1. Education
        2. Incubation
      5. Analytics and All the Things
      6. Virtual Reality
      7. Online Legacy
    3. Interviews: Industry Leaders Predict
      1. Greg Hemmings, Hemmings House
      2. Emily Lonigro Boylan, LimeRed Studio
      3. Miquel Ballester Salva, Fairphone
      4. Shawn Mills, Green House Data
      5. David Pomerantz, Greenpeace
      6. Pete Markiewicz, The Art Institutes
      7. James Christie, MadPow
      8. Andrew Boardman, Manoverboard
      9. Chris Adams, Product Science
      10. David Anderson, Canvas Host
    4. Final Word
  11. A. Figure Attributions and Links
  12. B. Acknowledgments
    1. B Corp Leaders Profiled in This Book
      1. Andrew Boardman
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      2. Mike Gifford
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      3. Robert Stevens
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      4. Jen Boynton
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      5. Miquel Ballester Salvà
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      6. Shawn Mills
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      7. Emily Lonigro Boylan
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      8. Greg Hemmings
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      9. Zach Berke and Phillip Clark
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      10. David Anderson
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      11. Emily Utz
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      12. Andy Crestodina
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      13. JD Capuano
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      14. Jill Pollack
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      15. Noel Burkman
        1. Why being a B Corp matters
      16. Other B Corps
    2. NGOs, Educators, and Design Leaders Profiled in This Book
      1. David Pomerantz
      2. Pete Markiewicz
      3. James Christie
      4. Eric Janofski
      5. René Post
      6. John Haugen
      7. Chris Adams
      8. Todd Larsen
    3. Team Mightybytes
  13. C. About the Author
  14. D. O’reilly®: Designing for Sustainability
  15. Index
  16. About the Author
  17. Copyright

Product information

  • Title: Designing for Sustainability
  • Author(s): Tim Frick
  • Release date: August 2016
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781491935729