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How a user-centred approach is improving principles for sustainable services 

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Social Impact & Sustainability

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When it comes to making digital services more sustainable, research shows that many organisations don’t know where to begin. A user-centred design (UCD) approach can help – which is why Opencast’s UCD team worked with the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to evolve its Greener Service Principles.   

Making digital services more sustainable is a key priority for government departments, not least because of the UK’s Net Zero strategy, and the government’s Technology Code of Practice, which specifically highlights the need to “make your technology sustainable”. Sustainability is also a priority for businesses.  

 But research highlights that many businesses don’t know where to start on this important issue. Climate action platform Ecologi found that “eight in 10 business owners want to be greener but just don’t know where to start”. Ecologi also said that 42% of small business owners struggle due to a lack of guidance, with 37% reporting either a lack of efficient carbon footprint data or an insufficient time to devote to ensuring they include best practices in their approach to lowering their impact on the environment.  

 As Opencast is both a member of the Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA) and a purpose-driven B Corp, we are committed to making the digital services that we design more sustainable. Like others, we’ve been figuring out exactly how to incorporate sustainable practices into our work – and have looked at the specific challenges facing designers in this space.   

4 people stand in front of white boards covered in post it notes, a man in a checked shirt, a woman with long brown hair and dark clothes, a woman with dark brown long hair and a fringe in dark clothes and a blue lanyard, a many with short dark brown hair, a beard and an orange t shirt

Developing confidence in sustainable design 

At Opencast, we ran workshops among our different communities of practice – service design, content and interaction design and user research – to find out how people approached sustainability in their work and gauge levels of confidence.  

   Our consultants placed themselves in one of three boxes:   

  • I don't know where to start 

  • I understand the problem

  • I know a few tools, frameworks, and approaches but not where to use them   

Practical steps to implementing sustainable design 

In response to internal research, a group from Opencast’s UCD community took part in a course on ‘Sustainability Action for Design Teams’, ran by Design Therapy’s Amelia Kuch and Sebastian Lawson-Thorp.  

  Over a couple of months, we deepened our background knowledge of different sustainability approaches, such as circular design, degrowth, regeneration and more. Getting an outside perspective and training by experts was crucial in helping us take practical steps towards actions to implement in our projects.  

DEFRA’s Greener Service Principles

We initially set out to create our own set of user research principles for sustainable practice. But, while developing them, we came across the work being done by Ned Gartside at DEFRA on its Greener Service Principles. Rather than creating another set of standards, we decided to approach DEFRA to offer our support with the development of its principles.  

 DEFRA’s 10 principles aim to guide the design, development and operation of services that are as environmentally sustainable as possible.   

The principles focus on reducing waste and negative environmental impact. The goal is for the principles to evolve, with testing and refinement guiding future updates to the Service Manual and Service Standard set by the Government Digital Service (GDS). To support this effort, in December and January Ned and DEFRA held a series of workshops alongside government transformation expert Guy Wolfenden, covering a range of disciplines.  

Opencast has contributed to the DEFRA principles by:   

  • conducting user research on DEFRA’s Greener Service Principles prototype – to gather insights around how people understand or would use them   

  • mapping the as-is and aspirational journey for the principles – to understand where there is still work to be done, pain points and opportunities   

  • writing simple recommendations off the back of this mapping exercise – identifying the importance of working on the content of the principles  

  • supporting with content design to make the principles easier to understand and action – to offer Opencast UCD expertise as part of our GDSA commitment   

A woman with shoulder length dark hair is smiling at someone out of frame, she is wearing an animal print long sleeve shirt, there are laptops on the table in front of her

Clear, concise content that’s focused on action

The prototyped principles had been developed with the input of an impressive array of subject matter experts and were extremely comprehensive – linking out to all the sources it referenced. But the user research we conducted (and our own initial reactions) highlighted the cognitive overload all this content led to.     

There was a gap between the amount of information on offer and any idea of what to do next. So, our Senior Content Designers, Melissa Gates and Tom Hall, did some content design work based on the review on the v0.4 draft from last autumn, to reduce the word count and make the language simpler, as well as proposing making the principles more focused on actions.  

Content design should always involve plenty of research to check it’s working for users, so we hope the work we’ve started will continue and be validated by testing it with those who’ll go on to use the principles in their work.  

Be pragmatic and persistent  

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information out there about how to mitigate climate change. But it is important to start somewhere and keep going. We recommend:  

  • starting with something small – even something as simple as including a question about sustainability in a research discussion guide can surface the issue in a project that might not have sustainability as a focus but will benefit from it.   

  • not pursuing perfection straight away – solving everything at once might not be possible – but influencing even one decision to limit environmental impact, is better than nothing and can lead to further change.  

  • collaborating – people are doing a lot of great work in this space and supporting one another is important when tackling a challenging topic. Share practice and progress and keep going.  

Commenting on the collaboration, DEFRA's Ned Gartside said: "The feedback that the user-centred design team at Opencast provided on our prototype set of Greener Service Principles helped determine the right ways to iterate and evolve them. In particular the content design support was really valuable in distilling some of ideas that were coming out of cross-government workshops into succinct and accessible wording."

Next steps

DEFRA is still developing its Greener Service Principles and is looking for more teams to pilot their use in projects to show how they can be applied in practice.     

Why not try using the principles on your next project? Even if it’s just one action, or a conversation with your team, applying them to real-life projects is the only way to figure out what works and what doesn’t. With so much to learn about sustainability, it’s important at this point to start and commit to learning.   

 Are you looking for ways to apply sustainable design principles to your organisation? We’d love to hear from you if so. We’d also be happy to share our thinking on the research we’ve done so far. Contact Clare Welch or Sam Murray-Sutton   

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