Integrating Sustainability into Design Workflows
Making digital sustainability visible in design tools through a framework that measures, guides, and educates designers about the environmental impact of their work.
Playground
Beyond Human Design
Services
Research-through-Design
Interaction Design
Product Strategy
Systems Thinking
Industry
Sustainable Technology
Climate Tech
Project Overview
This project explores how designers and design agencies can better understand and take responsibility for the climate footprint of digital design choices. The goal was to rethink how sustainability could become part of everyday design work rather than an external consideration.
The focus was not to build a single product, but to explore how sustainability considerations could be integrated into the tools and workflows designers already use.
Beyond Human Design is a project within the Master’s Digital Design program. The topic comes directly from discussions and challenges raised by industry and design agencies around technology, sustainability, and the role of design.
Problem Statement
Designers influence how products are shaped, used, and scaled, yet their environmental impact remains invisible in everyday design work. Although digital products rely on data centres, energy consumption, hardware, and ongoing maintenance, carbon footprint considerations are not part of daily design tasks.
This results in design work that remains user-centred but not world-centred.
Research Process
Identified existing sustainability tools and design practices by performing a tech and market review of carbon calculators, audits, and digital sustainability platforms.
Discovered designers’ awareness, constraints, and decision-making around sustainability through contextual interviews with professionals from ING and Randstad.
Explored how sustainability features could fit into everyday design tools through a Design Fiction workshop, where designers imagined how these features could appear in existing tools.
Understood how digital products contribute to energy use and carbon emissions by conducting research across academic papers, sustainability frameworks, and industry practices.
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Key Insights
Awareness gap
Complex guidance
Never 100% green
Organisational barriers
Design Process
There was a core idea to develop, but it was hard to name, visualise, or explain. It was not a feature, nor a plug-in, nor a new software, but a combination of elements. This led to a different direction: embedding sustainability directly into the design tools designers already use.
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Directions Explored
A Sustainable page builder plugin for WordPress.
An "Efficiency Agent" for early-stage ideation tools like Miro.
A feature-as-a-service that supports sustainability decisions by collecting CO2 through indicators like a shopping cart.
Defined feature structure and navigation to understand how sustainability capabilities could appear inside a design tool by creating task flows and interface structure in Figma.
Visualised how the concept could exist across different tools by creating mockups.
Explored feature ideas through sketches and low-fidelity wireframes.
Tested the designer's understanding and desirability through task-based prototype testing.
Constraints and Tensions
Solution
A framework that brings digital sustainability information into the design tools designers already use. The concept introduces integrated capabilities that make the carbon impact of design decisions visible and provide guidance. The idea was explored through a scenario using Figma to show how these three capabilities could exist within a familiar design workflow.
Guidance
Designers are more willing to act on guidance that enables small improvements rather than complete ones. When guidance supports balancing priorities, like visual identity, deadlines and client expectations, it becomes more useful and easier to apply in everyday workflows.
It is most effective when it links familiar indicators designers care about, like file size to quality, making improvements easy to adopt. However, designers shouldn’t lose control over their work.
Education
Education is essential because it enables decision-making and long-term behaviour change. Designers indicated they would use this approach as a learning tool to understand the impact of suggestions before acting.
This is supported by concise workflow guidance and access to deeper resources, which can also help communication with stakeholders during handover.
Measurement
Designers need metrics with reference points and relatable facts so that they can understand and compare their impact. That would help identify opportunities for improvement.
However, familiar rating scales, such as A–F, often result in surface-level understanding, so metrics must include explanation and context to become actionable and support existing priorities.
Impact
This project represents an initial step toward integrating sustainability into everyday design tools, leaving space for further development and industry adoption.
Increased awareness of design decisions
Participated in HvA Green Office
Perceived as learning journey
Aligned with UN SDG 7 & 13
Validated with industry practitioners
Through testing and interviews, senior designers shifted their mindset, stating that this type of integrated feature elevates sustainability from a bonus feature to a "must-have" professional competency, much like accessibility.