The Designers Ethiques collective has just published a selection of best practices accessible to any designer, whatever his technical level.

This guide to eco-design of digital services addresses the issues of eco-design " by trying to bridge the gap with accessibility, the attention economy or diversity. Indeed, eco-design is closely linked to user experience and digital accessibility. An eco-designed service will not only have a lower environmental impact, but also an improved user experience for a large majority of people.

Eco-design issues can encompass much more radical thinking. Its authors have decided to focus on " measures directly applicable to current projects, to give everyone keys on what he/she can do at his/her level to initiate an eco-design approach ".

Eco-design is a continuous improvement approach that aims to limit computer and energy resources at the user terminal, network and data center levels.

• "Applied to digital, it aims to offer new digital services that have less impact on the environment throughout their life cycle.

• Eco-designed applications, websites and software run on older devices, thus postponing terminal obsolescence and hardware renewal. Obsolescence is reflected in the fact that the user who experiences a slow terminal will tend to renew his device (smartphone, PC, tablet) to compensate for this induced slowness.
• Another challenge of eco-design is social and territorial. Limiting the use of a digital service to the latest generation of smartphone, OS, browser or broadband connection is a source of exclusion for part of the population and contributes to the digital divide.

• " The financial and legal stakes can be excellent arguments to convince decision-makers and clients to move towards this approach.
• The better use of hardware (servers, computers...) allows the company to save money, both on the renewal of equipment and on hosting costs, etc.
• Enhanced user experience and best practices that intersect with accessibility, on the other hand, help increase the audience.
• A serious eco-design approach can also be used as a communication and differentiation lever to reinforce the brand image.

Founded in March 2017, Les Ethical designers (association and action research structure around the design of responsible and sustainable digital services) aims to promote the design of services that respect users. It is notably at the origin of the bi-annual event Ethics By Design. The 2020 edition of Ethics by design was held from September 28 to October 02 in digital format.

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