When to go digital?
When talking about eco-design, we often hear the following comment: "eco-design is great, but wouldn't it be better to find alternative to a digital product in the first place? In other words, to achieve the lowest environmental impact, it's best to have none at all!"
So then, how do you determine whether or not you should make your service digital? While we can't give you an exact decision flowchart, here is a list of questions to consider when making that call.
Contents:
The first step in eco-design
This question is an integral part of the eco-design approach. In the RGESN (General Repository for the Eco-design of Digital Services), a resource developed by the French government, criterion 1.1 states that a digital service that does not meet at least one specific goal of the UN's sustainable development plan is futile and therefore should be avoided. In our own eco-design guide we have also included this question in the early stages of assessing needs and defining the essential (See section 2 of our guide).
However, as Gauthier Roussilhe highlights in his article "Environmental questions in the field of digital design" (Colloque Albi Médiations Sémiotiques, 2022):
"Most of the resources we've studied focus on "how to go digital?" rather than "should we go digital?" Without this fundamental step in the eco-design approach, the following steps could end up being more optimization than eco-design."
Not assessing whether a digital service is the best approach therefore amounts to ridding eco-design of its primary purpose.
Why turn away from eco-design?
The people in charge of implementing an eco-design approach are the same ones creating the service in the first place, and it is generally not in their interest, especially on a financial standpoint, to cancel the project.
It is often difficult to:
- turn down a client and lose the project
- turn down your boss who had the "great idea" of launching this new digital service
- give up on a project that could advance your career
- etc.
Generally speaking, it is never easy to spend time working on something only to then give it up. This is a trait connected to a number of cognitive biases: loss aversion, IKEA effect (irrational attachment to something we start working on), illusory truth effect (believing something is true simply because it is familiar), mere-exposure effect (developing a like or dislike for things we are familiar with), unit bias (needing to finish things that are started), status quo bias (resisting change).
Digital technologies have become an automatic solution to any problem: poor academic performance (cf Philippe Bihouix (French)), hunting accidents (cf Numerama article (French)), etc. Releasing a digital service (tablets for children, GPS-tracking for hunters, etc.) gives the illusion of action, and is trendy.
"They don't want to waste time; [...] they don't want to lose money. And never, at any point, do they ask themselves what they stand to gain from losing nothing."
How to decide?
Each context is unique and the final decision is not always made by the person reading this guide.
That being said, we have prepared a list of recommendations, summarized in this flowchart, and described below (PDF and Figma versions available at the bottom of the page (in French)).
1. Does your service tackle one of the 17 SDGs or one of the 9 planetary boundaries? RGESN 1.1
To learn more about the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), see the Wikipedia page.
To learn more about the 9 planetary boundaries, see the Wikipedia page.
If the answer is no, it is best not to develop the digital service.
If the decision makers still push for it to be developed:
- Consider leaving the project/client/organization.
- Or at least try to make it as accessible and eco-design influenced as possible. See our guide.
Be careful not to get straight into optimizing the service without considering whether it should be pursued in the first place (collectively or individually). Merely raising the question with reluctant decision makers can help shift their mindset and spread awareness.
If yes, it does not necessarily mean you should go digital anyway! Move forward to question 2.
2. What are the user needs and can a non-digital solution address them as well or better?
It's tempting to see digital technologies as a simple solution, accessible to all, and able to meet the stakes. But they are far from the ideal solution we often imagine them to be (see below).
"If I had one hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem, and 5 minutes thinking about the solutions."
In order to identify solutions, we must therefore define the problem. Below are typical design questions to be answered at this stage:
- Who are my users?
- What are their issues?
- What are their needs?
Be mindful not to expect solutions from users but focus on identifying fundamental needs. e.g. a user could express wishing for a "video explanation", which, after further inspection, would show the real need as being "understanding how the service works" and another delivery method could better answer it (depending on the context).
You can then identify which solutions address those needs in the simplest, most resilient, most accessible way to resolve the users' issues.
Is it a digital solution or not?
- Not digital: SMS, desk/counter, training, modifying job descriptions, etc.
- Digital: app, new feature, new page, dedicated website, etc.
A closer look: Why are digital solutions not ideal?
Digital technologies appear convenient for all, less expensive, and more environmental, but let us reexamine those claims:
- Digital solutions exclude users. In 2022, 8% of French people did not user the internet, not even occasionally. And half of French people experienced some hindrances limiting their use of digital or internet tools (source: Baromètre du numérique 2022 (French)). A digital service is therefore not the best way to reach the widest audience (compared to SMS for instance).
- Digital solutions are expensive. Designers for digital services have high wages. Creating and maintaining a website or an app can therefore cost tens or hundreds of thousands of euros, or even millions for a larger service (e.g. implementing Salesforce in a large organization).
- Digital solutions have a high environmental impact. Far from being "dematerialized", digital service rely on infrastructure that utilizes vast resources, including minerals whose extraction and transformation can be very destructive both environmentally and socially (see the introduction of our guide).
3. Is there an already existing solution for those needs?
If a digital solution has been found preferable to meet the needs of your users and tackle sustainable development goals, it is not necessarily enough to justify pursuing it. As a matter of fact, too many service "reinvent the wheel" and add already existing solutions to the market. e.g. proliferation of calculators for the environmental impact of websites.
"It is essential to ensure that one or more existing services do not already meet users' needs to avoid duplicating them."
This is not easy to implement since most organization would want to have control over their solution, but ideally, it should be taken into account.
4. Does the service create more value than it destroys?
If no one has ever gone and created this digital service that we deem useful for humankind and our users, we should then ask ourselves whether we are about to trigger more problems than we are solving.
Example 1: if our energy-saving solution brings about a pollution transfer from electricity to mineral resources.
Example 2: ride-sharing services, instead of reducing gas consumption by sharing vehicles, have increased traffic by making car-based transportation competitive against public transportation. This is a rebound effect.
To determine whether your service is at risk of bringing about this type of consequences, the best approach is to list all positive and negative externalities beforehand.
- Who are my non-users and how will they be affected?
- What are the non-human entities affected by my service? (rivers, forests, air, fauna, etc.)
- What are the short and long term effects on a social, psychological, political, economic and environmental standpoint?
- etc.
See Systemic Design.
Once externalities have been studied in this manner, they should be compared in order to assess the value creation for the service. Externalities being inherently of different natures (environmental, social, political, etc.), it may be very difficult to compare them. This step will therefore involve a fair bit of subjectivity.
Still, it is worth pursuing since it enables you to:
- possibly back out of the project (it is not too late)
- be lucid about the flaws and impacts of the service (and avoid naive and exaggerated statements on the "miracle solution" dimension of it (e.g. this connected sensor to reduce the watering of golf courses))
- anticipate and limit negative externalities (for instance, planning for moderators, and signaling features, for disrespectful and harmful content, something Facebook failed to do in Myanmar (French))
This stage is especially important to help arbitrate in the event that the service solves users' issues but creates socio-economic problems.
Example: AirBnB offers competitive accommodation options through an ergonomic interface but worsens the housing crisis in large cities and engenders tax evasion.
Other questions to consider:
- Is your service tackling a need that is limited in its time frame and not recurring? For instance, managing waste during the Olympic Games.
- Is my target audience very limited? For instance, a service that is specific to your organization.
If yes, it does not mean you should not carry out the project, but it might be helpful to consider ways to repurpose and reuse, including through the use of open source resources.
Criteria to be met
Congratulations! Your service ticks all the following boxes:
- It tackles at least one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals et one of the 9 planetary boundaries.
- It addresses real user needs.
- It cannot be replaced by a non-digital option.
- No other solution tackles the same needs.
- It creates more values than it destroys.
- It is useful to a wide audience or can be reused in other contexts.
I can then consider how to apply the eco-design approach to this service (see: our eco-design guide).