This article retraces the round table “What priorities in terms of responsible digital technology?”, organized on September 19, 2023 during the first edition of UX-Conf – Human First. Hosted by Clément Fages, digital journalist, this highlight brought together five speakers:
- Nour Hebiri, UX-Republic
- Renaud Dorizon, ManoMano
- Martin-Auguste Bossut, ManoMano
- Loic Le Pellec, Engie
- Maxime Champoux, Qonto
Responsible digital technology is an approach that aims to improve the ecological footprint of digital technology – which represents 3 to 4% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and 2,5% of the national carbon footprint (ARCEP, 2023 study) – but also to combat the digital divide, ensure data protection and more broadly adopt an ethical societal stance.
Combining sobriety, accessibility and business issues
“At ManoMano, we built our user journeys empirically. We know from studies that 70% of features are non-essential , and even 45% are not used,” stated Martin-Auguste Bossut, Sustainability Data Manager at ManoMano. He recommends occasionally undertaking “a little digital slimming down.”
Here's his method: reflect on what's essential , conduct A/B testing, measure, iterate, trying to reconcile simplification roadmaps with business objectives. To achieve this, Martin-Auguste emphasizes "the duty to raise awareness and share one's convictions, especially with IT, because they also have their own roadmap. Once everyone is aligned, it's much simpler."
Renaud Dorizon, Head of Design at ManoMano, then emphasizes that “integrating eco-design into processes and projects while managing the hypergrowth of a scale-up is complicated” and that “the timing has to be right.” Creating or redesigning a Design System is a key moment where “ eco-design, accessibility , and business objectives converge .” When the Design System is deployed on a large scale, it is important to apply the accessibility standards of the RGAA (General Accessibility Improvement Framework) and the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), and to consider what is essential. This allows for a significant impact. Furthermore, by using cleaner code and lighter pages, the site also improves its search engine ranking.
Promoting accessibility and inclusion through the Design System
Qonto, a banking alternative for entrepreneurs and very small businesses, created its Design System several years ago. “ Today, when we create or develop a component, we use checklists and tools like Stark on Figma , to have control points and ensure that we are on track in terms of accessibility and inclusion ,” says Maxime Champoux, Head of Product at Qonto.
In his experience, fixing all accessibility issues at once in mode “batch” during a rebranding for example, is not the best option. “On the Product side, there are 150 of us and we do between 25 and 30 features per quarter. If we do not manage to take responsibility for the choices we make, to share knowledge, it will become obsolete quite quickly”.
The establishment of a Design System therefore appears, here again, as a solution, ensuring that the dissemination of standards is accompanied by training.
Beyond the Design System, keyboard navigation, voiceOver, etc., are managed at the development stage to ensure that the interface will be compatible with tools promoting inclusion.
This approach benefits both users and the company, underlined Maxime Champoux. “In terms of accessibility, we directly see the impact on user satisfaction (NPS) but also on the ability to reach a wider audience”.
Think globally and act on your scale
Digital accessibility is also a priority for Nour Hebiri, Senior product designer at UX-Republic, who encourages careful attention to interfaces, including animations and micro-interactions.
Speaking more generally about responsible digital technology, Nour Hebiri shared her conviction that “the'impact of future services should be assessed from the scoping stage, systemically. You have to think about the physical and functional aspect, graphic design, content, digital accessibility but also development and hosting”.
Concerning eco-design, she suggests'press tools like'EcoIndex de Green IT and recommends the Mobile First approach which limits the temptation to fill interfaces with superfluous content whose loading will have an environmental impact.
Aware that designers sometimes have difficulty carrying the approach within the company, Nour Hebiri also reminds us that even small actions are beneficial. For example, auto-plays and the use of images with oversized formats and resolutions should be avoided.
Target your actions to maximize impact
Loic Le Pellec, Head of Digital at Engie's French Business Customer Division , addressed the topic of digital responsibility with humility and pragmatism. “Regarding Green IT, like many others, we're grappling with questions: what do we measure and how? What scope (only the front end? the back end, the servers?) What are the objectives? At Engie, we approach this with sincerity and a commitment to effectiveness to avoid greenwashing.”
At the group level, Engie is (financially) incentivizing its units to extend the lifespan of IT equipment , said Loïc Le Pellec, an action whose impact is maximized by the size of the company.
He also observes that, as a natural gas supplier and within the framework of Scope 3 emissions , “the main challenge for its management is not only to reduce its own carbon footprint but also to help customers reduce theirs.” They therefore offer consumption monitoring, challenges, and a carbon footprint simulator , all tools that rely on… digital technology.
Using digital for responsible innovations
Digital can also be used to make the company itself more responsible, as Martin-Auguste Bossut demonstrated by speaking with pride about Carbon score 3.
Less than six months ago, ManoMano implemented a rating system that allows users to compare products based on their carbon footprint . Nearly 700,000 products have already been rated. The company describes this highly ambitious project as "ultra - tech ." "ManoMano handles millions of products, and we wanted a project that was immediately ' at scale' to have an impact."
According to Martin-Auguste Bossut, the first challenge was data. “We had to build an efficient data model. We immediately asked ourselves, with our IT manager, how to make this ad-hoc project interesting from a Green IT perspective and if we really needed an update every day, for example.”
The issue of accessibility also arose: “We simplify with a rating from A to E. But how do we ensure our customers easily adopt this method, including those who have difficulty navigating the internet?” Martin Auguste Bossut noted that this project, while beneficial to consumers, was also advantageous for ManoMano, which now has real product data for measuring and managing its Scope 3 compliance.
Conclusion
From user-centered design to data management and eco-design, there are many ways to make digital practices more responsible, including in the face of business constraints. An issue whose consideration is now imperative for companies concerned about the future of our planet and the satisfaction of their users.
Sylvie Austrui, UX Designer – UX-Republic
