#18 Sustainable Design in UX with Thorsten Jonas
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Hello friends and welcome back to the future of UX podcast where we explore the latest trends and innovations in technology. My name is Patricia Reiners and I'm your host for this podcast.

I'm a UX designer, innovation designer, running my own business in beautiful Berlin in Germany and consult clients when it comes to the future. Of course, innovations, the metaverse, so basically everything that's ahead of us. And in this podcast, I talk with different people about the future, about topics that will become very, very important in the future or maybe are already pretty important and

And today, or in this episode, I had a really interesting guest and a very interesting and important topic, which is sustainable UX and innovation. So in this podcast episode, I had a really, really cool guest, sustainable UX and innovation specialist Torsten Jonas.

I actually met Torsten at an Adobe event many years ago. And since then, a lot of things have happened in his life. He went through a burnout and realized that he wants to do something meaningful with his career. And some kind of changed his whole focus onto his work.

very own passion topic, which is sustainable design. And in our interview, he talks very openly about how to deal with mental health problems in your career, how to start something new, start from scratch, and also how to start a new movement, where of course also failure is part of the process.

He started the Sustainable UX Network for designers to learn about sustainable design and also to connect between each other. So this is really cool.

And now Torsten is a keynote speaker, he's a consultant and he shares tips about sustainable design and why it's important now. So a very, very inspiring interview. Sit back, relax and enjoy this interview.

Okay, hi Torsten. Thank you so much for being here. I'm super happy to have you today in the podcast. I really love the topic sustainable design and I am super curious to hear how you got started with sustainable design. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about your way into sustainable design.

Sure. Yeah, at first, thank you very much also in your direction for having me here and for inviting me. It's a pleasure. It's an honor. I mean, we know each other for some years now, I think, right? But it's so cool to be in your podcast and really happy to be here and to talk about, yeah, sustainable UX and design because it's, yeah, I think it's a pretty important topic.

And yeah, happy to hear, happy to talk a little bit about my personal story with this as well. And it's, yeah, it's a story of a bunch of years, I would say. So I was in preparation for the podcast. I was thinking a little bit, okay, when started this whole journey actually? And it's like these thoughts about how to do something maybe more meaningful with my work or within my work as a UX designer is interesting.

It's around my mind for quite some time, for many years, I would say. So I used to work in a big agency here in Hamburg, where I'm from, built up the UX department, led the UX department as the director of UX, worked for several big clients, TV stations, media brands. So you could say pretty cool projects, but did I change anything for the world? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. And so the...

I remember a moment when I visited my sister and my nephew many years ago in Copenhagen. I think it was around Christmas when I was walking through the streets in Copenhagen and thinking about, okay, yeah, how can you, with your work in UX, how can you make something or use this to help to make the world maybe better or to stop destroying the world? And yeah, but...

it took some time actually on many steps to get more and more into into this direction and I think a really important step for me was uh some years ago after many years in the agency actually I ran into a burnout so I well I did too much work and I loved my work still and maybe that was the problem so um yeah I ran into a burnout I was out of work I don't know for

five months, six months, something like this. And I returned to the agency afterwards. But after some time, I realized after a few months, okay, this is this is not what I want to do anymore. And this is not how I want to work anymore. So I decided to leave the agency world and thought, okay, maybe that's the point where I try to focus more on things that

that are maybe more meaningful than working for the next TV station or for the next media brand.

And I think so this is where this journey really, really started. And well, it started with the beginning of the Corona pandemic, actually, which was pretty good timing, leaving your full employment job with the beginning of a pandemic. But well, it was the right point for me, I would say. And back then, I think for the first time I did a talk about sustainable design, sustainable UX,

And I got pretty good feedback on that. And so that drove me more and okay, yeah, maybe the thoughts I have and how I think about this and what I think we should do, maybe that's not so wrong. And maybe I could move on there. And so I did like in 2020, I was invited to speak at Adobe Max actually about my burnout. So the talk was called the UX of burnout.

And it was an honor to... I still remember the talk. It was really cool. I remember that you used workshop tactics, kind of like your ex methods for your burnout, which really resonated with me because as an ex designer, you always try to do it in a workshop style or use the methods that you learn for yourself and for your friends and for your life, which I think is pretty fascinating. So I really loved that talk. Yeah.

Yes, I think we have a great tool set as VX designers, right? It cannot do all the work, but it can really support you and help you on your way through burnout, through mental struggles. So even if you have been falling totally into the burnout spiral. And yeah, so I did this talk and then I thought of, okay, if I have this stage, it was virtually because the whole conference was virtually back then.

I thought of, okay, I was always thinking about this Sustainable UX Manifesto thing. Maybe I just name it as a project at the end of the talk and say, okay, this is something I'm working on right now with some people and would be interested to join. I don't know. And so I got a domain name for it. So I had the domain and the coming soon page there, but that was all. And then I named it there and...

Yeah, well, actually, afterwards, it fell a little bit to sleep again, I would say. So next step was 2021. I was at the UX Copenhagen conference speaking about the UX of burnout. And by the way, I can highly recommend this conference. It's in March, August. I will be there this year again. So if anyone is there, pretty nice, pretty nice conference. And...

would be wonderful because they have a lot of really meaningful talks right so not this bingo i'm so great here i'm so great there but um things that really matter i would say yeah and so what we did there

pretty, well, not super spontaneous, but a little bit. We did a workshop at the evening there and said, hey, who wants to join us working on Sustainable UX? We renamed the manifesto. So I had some people joining me back then and we renamed it to the Sustainable UX Playbook because we had to think or we thought of, yeah, maybe we don't need another manifesto because there are many great manifestos for many things out there. We need practical

Tips, tactics, methods, tools, right? And maybe that's not something a small group of people should do, but as many people as possible. And so we did a workshop there working on these things. And honestly, again, afterwards, it fell asleep a little bit. Again, but so that was an important step coming from this. Okay, we do a manifesto to how can we build a playbook thing? And then...

In again in 2021 so end of the year I was again invited to speak at Adobe Max and there I spoke about these project, the sustainable UX playbook and the idea was okay we use this as a kickoff right so we say, this is what we want to do there.

And here's an invitation for a date in December where we start all this. And who is interested to join this and to work on this, we are happy to welcome all these people there. And so then end of the year 2021, we started this initiative with, I think there were like more than 100 people from all over the world.

And we set up different groups based on the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN with the goal to work on ideas, how to drive these with UX, within UX, with design, within design. And we had a workshop toolkit that we provided to the groups and said, okay, this you can use to tackle the Sustainable Development Goals. And what was in this toolkit? Sorry to jump in, but I'm just curious. Yeah, the idea was actually...

So one person of us, Alice, who is whenever you need a person who should help you building great Miro workshops, you should ask Alice, I can tell. Okay, I need to connect with her because I definitely need some help. Okay, yeah, she's definitely doing it fantastic. So she built this huge workshop kit and the idea was to...

So to take one of the sustainable development goals of the UN, these are 17 goals that are describing the different aspects of sustainability. So because the thing is, and that's a really important thing for me and for the others, that sustainability is more than CO2 emissions and energy consumption. That's really important. And the climate catastrophe is really important and we need to do as much as we can there. But sustainability has many more aspects, inequalities,

social based, gender based, right? All these things are also about sustainability and that's very well named in the sustainable development goals. And so for us, it was important to tackle or to try to tackle all aspects of sustainability and not only

only the energy topics. And so the toolkit, the idea was to use UX methods, methods we all know, to understand a certain sustainable development goal, to understand how it affects us in our daily life, in our work, how our work and how we are affecting this. So to create an understanding and then to try to tackle these

maybe challenges or problems that have been found with or creating ideas how this can be tackled. So it was like a series of four to five workshops, actually evening long workshops. And so that was the idea. And it's still there. And well, we also had some learnings where we'd say, okay, at this point, maybe we should make it a little bit easier and a little bit easier here.

But yeah, that was the workshop kit actually. And so then we gave it to the groups and we had like the groups start working on this. And it was totally, how to say that, decentralized. So it was not a hackathon or something. We said, okay, here, go and take your time, right? Which was, if I would do it again today, I think I would say,

I would rather we would rather do it in a let's say a weekend hackathon and say, okay, we start now. We want to finish then because that was yeah, if you make it in such a decentralized way, it's hard to stay on track, I would say. Right. So it's like groups work. And then also from our side, I mean, we all do this besides our normal work where we also need to work to make some money for living.

And so that's always a problem that, yeah, again, things fall asleep and nothing happens for some time. So, so true. And I'm really curious to understand a bit like how you, I mean, at the moment, the sustainable design aspect is like a really big part of your life. Everything you're sharing on LinkedIn is about that topic. You're doing like so many conferences, you're sharing like so much content about it.

How did you really get to that point where you just like 100% really focus on it, be known for that topic and also include that into your personal branding from, you know, like the in-between time where like things fall asleep or where you have other projects and clients? Like, how did you manage that shift? Actually, and that's why I was telling all these things, because I think all these steps

led me also into this because, I mean, the focus on these initiative sucks, which in the beginning was the Sustainable UX Manifesto, then became the Sustainable UX Playbook. And now we renamed it to the Sustainable UX Network last year because we realized, okay, it's not a one-time project. It's an ongoing thing, right? We all will do this for the rest of our lives, I would say.

And the important thing here is connecting with other people, discussing things, discussing ideas, creating new ideas together. And that's what I can say what is happening for me, like almost every week, I would say. I meet new people at being in person at conferences, being at virtually on LinkedIn. I learn new things. I learn about new things.

initiatives ideas from other people i share ideas with other people who then comment on this and we discuss things and so i would say especially over the past year so 2022 i i met so many really nice inspiring people from all over the world and i mean people who i i

in the past had looked up to people who wrote books or who were like role models for me. Right. And by working in this field, by just working in this and doing things, I met so many people. I learned so many new things. I had new ideas by connecting things, whatever. And this led me into this field, I would say. And this is this whole community and this

collaboration and meeting other people aspect is so, so important here because there is, I mean, things are changing every day and we need to continue learning every day, every week, every month.

And this is so important. And this is how we all, I think, could learn more about this. So sharing my knowledge and my ideas is also a way for me to learn new things, to meet new people. And this is a really important aspect. And this is what happened last year, I would say. It started with, I would say, with starting this playbook thing.

And then one thing came after another. I went somewhere, met someone, went to another place, met another one, shared new ideas. We realized, okay, yeah, it's not a playbook. It's more a network that we're creating here. Like with, I think now we have more than 2000 people from all over the world somehow connected to this network, which is, yeah, it's really nice. And it's not like,

I mean, we are not doing great marketing, right? We talk about this. Well, I do a lot of talks for sure, but that's the only thing we do. And so there is a great or a big need for this out there. You can see that designers are, they seek or search things like this. And yeah, it's like just talking about things brings us further, I would say. And therefore, I think this is a big learning for me that

Speaking more about this also helps me on my way and brings us further and brings us new ideas. And that's how we have to do it, I think, because there are many great people out there who work in this field, right? And it's a lot about connecting these things and sharing these things because the majority of people still...

out there have not heard so much about these things. I mean, we who are in this bubble already think like, okay, everyone meanwhile should know or knows about this, right? But the truth is, no, most of the people still haven't thought about this. I totally agree. And also in the project I'm working in as a freelance designer, sustainable design is most of the times not a topic there. Although the designers have heard about it and know some practices,

It's not a priority. It's not an important topic. Like we don't just talk about it. We have other challenges or other tasks that we need to focus on. So I'm curious, do you have some tips on like,

you know me being like a freelance designer joining a team as a ux designer how how could we include a sustainable design aspect that are tangible and that are easy to use and yeah that help us also to convince the client to prioritize these topics maybe you have some tips yeah well there is a bunch of and let's see how many we can can bring in here yeah because i think the

Well, the interesting thing about UX is that UX is involved throughout the whole product design process. And with product design, I mean also product development, right? So from the idea to here's a digital product that people can use. And UX is involved everywhere. And people are involved at different stages, right? Maybe you're a junior designer and you're doing like only design.

the design at the very end so you do not do like user journeys in the beginning but you do like design design in the end there is something you can do you can try to um to use patterns that are for example more energy efficient so very popular example that's not from me but i use it in my talks i still use it in my talks is like when you design for a website

And I mean, we all know these websites that have a big carousel at the hero section of a website, right? And so the fact is, most of the time, these are very energy consuming because all the data that is in the carousel, so what the pictures that are on position one, two, three, four, five, all needs to be preloaded to the website.

meanwhile numbers show most of the people do not click at what is at position two three four five so it's useless data right so and you could easily by avoiding using a carousel you could easily save data sometimes i don't know someone will come and say hey i still want it there but in your design you could try not to

to build it in there. Or there is like, there are like great, many people who have, especially for web design, there are great resources, how to create more energy efficient websites. Like you can talk about colors, dark mode is a thing, fonts. So do not use sophisticated fonts, but try to use system fonts because they do not need to be loaded, et cetera. So there is great resources, what you can do in the, in the,

in the hands-on design process of a project. And I think these are things you could also do if you're a junior and not in the job for a long time. And I always say to people, hey, just build it in there. And maybe in 50% of the topics, someone will come to you and say, no, please do it differently. But you could at least try. And even if only one or two times out of 10, it works, you still have changed something.

So this is one thing you can do. And then if you go more to the front part of the UX design process, so let's say user journeys, for example, from my point of view, it's very important still to create a lot of transparency there. So for example, let's say, I mean, we all create user journeys all the time and we could easily add additional layers to our user journeys that say,

how much energy is consumed at this step of the user journey, from which energy source. So is it green energy or is it not? So by this, we create transparency and create a basis to discuss energy consumption of a project. Because I think it's very important to start this discussion because there are many ways to save energy. If we talk about big websites, let's say...

big online shops, right? There is so much they can do if they, for example, so I talked to a friend beginning of last year or midst of last year, I don't know. And he's working at a big, big e-commerce company. And so after we discussed, he was going to his tech guys. And what they did is, for example, all the pictures that show the products, they changed them from colorful background to white background.

which makes the pictures less data heavy, right? So a picture, I don't know, 100 kilobytes to 80 kilobytes, whatever. And by this, they saved like gigabytes of data, right? And this results in tons of CO2 you can save per month just by doing this.

Or if you talk about caching mechanisms, right? There's a lot of things you can do. And I think what we can do about this is creating the transparency. Hey, here's a lot of energy consumed by doing this, right? If we start just to build it in, I mean, if I...

I'm in a project and I build a user journey. I could just add this layer. No one will say, no, don't do this. I just put it in and say, yeah, but that's always part of my user journey. I always put it in there. And by this, we can start a discussion. I think by this, we, we incept thoughts and ideas into the minds of other people and stakeholders. So that's a very important thing we can do if we work on more

Yeah, on the more, let's say, strategic or however we want to name this level. And we could do this not only for energy, but also for like, I don't know, let's say. So a huge topic for me in my talks and my personal work is that the products that we build, we always focus on the user, right? So we say we are the advocates for the user. We understand the users and we build products that are good for the users. And

The problem with this is that everything we build is always embedded in a bigger context, in a bigger system, and it's influencing other actors, other people, the environment, I don't know, the neighborhoods, whatever. Let's say...

I'm ordering my groceries via, I don't know, Gorillaz, Flink, you name it. It's all the same. Right. And so that's, you could say, super convenient from a UX perspective because I can just do it from my couch and I only need to get up to go to the door and pick up the stuff.

Right. So super nice UX from a user's perspective. But what's the price? Well, you have delivery riders who are not paid well, who are very often not even employed at the company, but like are self-employed and so have the full financial risk on their side. You have like the business models of these companies are

you know the silicon valley guys would say disruptive and i would say it's rather dis destructive because it's like if if it really works nobody knows but by doing this they are destroying the small the small grocery stores we have in our neighborhoods in the big cities so the price for creating great ux is pretty high right so yeah and and that's um i think this is really important yeah

Sorry to interrupt, but I think this is such a great example. I think it's super interesting with gorillas. I once shared it on Instagram and I got one very interesting comment and I'm curious to hear what you think about it. So someone said...

You also need to see that from the psychology aspect as well, because there are studies that show that everything gets more convenient and you don't go outside that much. And actually, the brain needs these obstacles and these challenges on a day-to-day basis.

going outside, you know, like our ancestors, they needed to hunt their food, they needed to collect wood and all these things. So the brain needs these things to really feel fulfilled and be happy and create the right hormones and everything. So like going to the supermarket can be a really good thing for the user in the long term, right? Although like short term, it's definitely more convenient being at home. But what are the long term effects of these things?

I don't know. What do you think about it? Well, yeah, well, I think so. Well, as a person, I love being outside, right? So I do a lot of outside sports. I love going to the mountains. And I know and as a person who has dealt with mental issues a lot in my life, I know how good just being outside, just doing a hike outside, I don't know, climbing to a mountain, going to the mountains in the summer is.

no matter how exhausting it is, it's still so healing for me. Standing on a mountain just for an hour, just watching the skies and the horizon, that's really good for you. And you need to do these things. And therefore, yes, I think we need, we cannot just sit in our homes the whole day and order everything. As you said, it's not good for us and it's not

it's not good for society as well. And that's also an interesting topic because when you look at the sustainable development goals, one goal, for example, is about mental health and mental well-being. And it's also though we say we build products for our users,

Quite often, I think we do not build products for our users, but we build them for some stakeholders who want to do something with the users. And like we build products that are built to drag the users in as much as possible. Right. So to bring the users to a point that they spend as much time as possible with our product, which is not easy.

good for the user I don't know if you do you know the book Momo it's a very famous book here from Germany for for children right yeah it's a children's book well actually Michael Ender the the author he wanted to do I think he wanted to do uh

movie like 10 or 15 years before he wrote this child's book with this topic but nobody wanted to make this movie and then he wrote a child book from it and well it's I still recommend to anybody out of out anybody of you if you do not know this book read it it's the perfect metaphor for nowadays times I would say interesting so it's mainly about yeah

It's a world, right, with very nice people. And then one day the gray gentlemen appear and they seem to be nice and friendly as well. But what they do is they steal the people their time. So they explain the people, hey, you're wasting your time by hanging out with the neighbors, by drinking coffee, use this time to work more. And by this, they are stealing the time from the people. And by this, creating a world as gray as the gray gentlemen are.

In the end, Momo comes and saves the world. That's so cool. That makes total sense. Wow. Like I read the book when I was like little, so I don't remember everything. But now, yeah, that's like that makes so much sense. I will link it in the show notes. So for everyone who doesn't know the book,

That makes so much sense. There is a nice audiobook version if you speak German. It's read by, I think, Gerd Heinreich. So it's a great voice. It's perfect to hear. And it remembers me very much of the products we built because, I don't know, we have these funnels, right? So we need to drag the user more into our products.

The time the user spends with our product is like, that's how we measure the value actually. And I would say this is wrong, right? So by this, we become the great gentlemen who steal time from our users. And well, honestly, we should be Momo saving our users and not be the great gentlemen stealing time. And this is also about sustainability, creating products that maybe sometimes not...

drag more and more time from our users, but help users to fulfill whatever they want to do as fast as possible and not dragging them more into our products. No, I don't know. Infinite scrolling, doom scrolling. It's not good for us. We all know that, right? And it's there. And this is something we should also, as UX designers, think about what's really good for our users. And maybe something that is good for our stakeholders is definitely not good for our users.

I agree. I agree. So I think like the first task would be for designers to really understand what really makes an impact for society, for the environment. So to really understand what sustainable design means, some practical tips, what they can use in their day to day life. And the second thing, and I think this is maybe even a little bit more challenging, is to convince the client to go with the sustainable solution.

Because I know these discussions with clients when they want the color background and although like the white background would be better, but it's sometimes so difficult to convince them that this is like the sustainable way. Do you have some tips in a discussion what you can say, how you can convince people to go with the sustainable way, although it doesn't bring instant money back, which is an important factor for sure.

I would say there is different things. So the first thing is, for example, if you look at commercials, TV commercials, et cetera, nowadays, there is a lot of use of the color green, I would say. And so nowadays it still is enough to paint your stuff a little bit greener. Then people think, okay, you are sustainable.

This will change because people are not dumb, right? People are smart and people will learn what really is sustainable and what is not. And I think in, I don't know, maybe two to three years, it won't be enough anymore to paint your stuff green. You need to prove that you are sustainable. So time is on our side.

I think it's just so we just need to try to speed things up a little bit. And this is the first very good, good argument. I would I would say it's like people are beginning already to demand these things. And you should start now implementing these things because it might take time and you should be there when the public demand is so high that.

that it is a financial, economical risk for you if you are not and if you cannot prove that you are sustainable. So that's one thing. And then I think especially here in the EU, regulations will come. We already see things going on and the EU will regulate, especially on CO2 emissions and energy consumptions,

regulations will come and you at some point you have to you have to meet them and well you could start preparing yourself for this now or you could start when it's maybe too late so these are the two two arguments and i also think that i mean if you look especially here in germany and we have um

What's the English word? So the ecological food and groceries we have, right? So people are willing to pay a lot more money for these groceries. Not everybody can afford this, but it's already a market, right? So people pay more

for a more sustainable product and this will become more and more and more I think so. I personally think in, I don't know, in a few years you will be even be able to make more money if you can prove that you are sustainable. It's not my personal goal because I think it should be affordable to anyone.

But maybe this is the thing you should say to the stakeholders at the client. So it's hard to prove still, right? But I mean, especially the regulations thing, there are already things going on and there are initiatives on EU level and these things will come. Maybe at first for, I don't know,

Things that are driven by administration, etc. So, for example, I mean, last week I was in, no, two weeks ago, I was in Denmark, in Copenhagen and spoke at the

How to say that? At the Danish tax administration. Because their IT design department, they were also curious about, okay, how can we do our things more sustainably, right? So they run a website that every Danish person needs to use to make their taxes. So that's millions of users. That's like...

tons of CO2 you can save by changing a few things on the websites. And so yeah, regulations will come in the EU and you can prepare now or you can start preparing when it's too late and things will get even more expensive. And this maybe is something people start to understand already now.

That's a good point. I mean, I think this can be really scary for big companies. I think like for everyone, right? Like if they're too late for something and then they need to invest extra, things getting more expensive, maybe there are some fines on it. You never know. So like getting ready early makes sense.

so much sense although I'm I think like you know we're both from Germany and Germany is so much about like certificates and like trusted stuff so it would be so nice to have like a like a certificate like a little label you can put on your website something like a little trophy that you get you know like a gamified version that I don't know you have something in your hands

Honestly, this is something I personally dream of with the whole Sux initiative and the Sux network to create like the Sux label, right? So that you somehow... Do it. So it's on my list for this year to try. How can you make like a more, how to say that...

holistic, sustainable label that is not only about energy consumption and CO2 emissions, but also about the other aspects. And so, yeah, that's definitely something I would like to work on because that's what we are missing, right? We still cannot really measure the social impacts of the products that we build. There is no way. And we need this as well. Cool. Excited to see that this year. Super cool. I love that.

I think, yeah, that will be really successful. Not only in Germany, I think like for the whole world. It's nice to have something that, like something measurable, something that you can put on your website, like a little reward that you'll get.

Because also for people from the psychology, from the psychological aspect, it's sometimes really difficult to convince people to do something if there is not a reward at all. Not all people really care about other people, the environment. So yeah, to have something, get something back is really helpful.

What do you think are the biggest challenges at the moment when it comes to sustainable design or when it comes to implementing it or redesigning websites or really rethinking the structure? What are the biggest obstacles, challenges for a company? Well, I think it's still a lot about creating transparency. And this is something where we could play a significant role.

Because as I said, it's like still there are so many people who haven't thought about these things, not because they are bad people. They want to think they just haven't thought about it. And they need this, how to say, this starting point where they could start thinking about this. Right. And this is still a challenge, I would say, to create this transparency about the impacts of the products that we build on all levels. Then there is

I think so, especially if you go to design, there is sometimes people think like, yeah, but well, I can create a more sustainable website, but then it looks ugly. And so this is something we sometimes also need to fight and where we need to do a lot of explanation because, well, you can make a sustainable website that is still beautiful and there are great examples out there.

But still, sometimes we need to discuss, hey, do we really need, I don't know, ten stock photos on this web page? What's the information that's transported with this? Is this necessary? And this will be a big discussion sometimes, I think. And I think we also need to... So on this journey we are on, we need to take our users with us. So we need to explain users

the impacts of using digital products because there are still many people out there who think yeah well reading something in the internet is much better than reading it on newspaper because no i do not need paper for this no no trees need to get used to to create this paper and yeah well this is not true using the internet uses a lot of energy right a lot of energy and i think many people

do not have do not know this even they think it's the internet there's it's it's good it's it's digital no nothing yeah and so we need to explain this to our users and we need like to um let's say on websites you could i like the idea of creating a client-friendly version of a website but

Offer both and explain to the user, hey, look, here's a climate-friendly website, this version of the website. This needs, I don't know, only the tens of energy as the normal version of the website. Do you want to switch there? So instead of just putting another website on there and then people having questions in their mind saying, okay, why are there not so much pictures? We need to explain and educate them.

and say, hey, we are doing this for this reason. And then people will understand and people will be happy, I don't know, to maybe see a little bit less pictures. And this is also, I think, a big challenge. So educating not only our stakeholders or the stakeholders and companies, but also educating the users and take them with us on this journey. So you just mentioned educating the clients, the users.

But what about the designers, right? So if there are people listening who are maybe early stage careers or maybe a little bit more experienced, who want to learn more about sustainable design, what would you recommend them? Where can they find content? Where can they find your content? How can they dive into the topic?

Well, you could just come to the Sustainable UX Network. That would be great. So it's like, yeah, we have a Slack community there where we share a lot of things. We have a LinkedIn page where we share a lot of things. We started a podcast last year where we interview, I would say, really inspiring people. So we had, for example, Tim Frick.

who wrote the very famous book Designing for Sustainability. Or we had Trine Falbe, who is one of the co authors of the Ethical Design Handbook. I would say these are icons of this whole movement, right? So these are people I was looking up to and still use as role models. And I would say, yes, start somewhere. And if you do not join our community,

go somewhere else, but there are you need to start digging into this and then you will find more and more because there are so many great resources out there. Sometimes it's more about finding them and then you just need to start and then you will step by step get deeper into this field. So yeah, I would say join the Sustainable UX Network is a good start. We have also newsletter now. We just started last month.

where we share like resources and things. And yeah, also feel free to connect me on LinkedIn. So I'm happy to discuss, to connect with everyone because it's about gathering with other people, I would say. Getting together with other people, discuss things, get new ideas. And yeah, that would be...

a great, great starting point and you will find many, many more great resources from there. Cool. Okay. That's a good tip. So everyone who's interested in that topic, just connect with Tarsten on LinkedIn and then join the Slack group and then things fall into place. What I really like about... Yeah.

So maybe I think so. Yeah, no, no. So the URL is sustainable. Your ex network.com. I just realized I didn't mention it. So I will link it in the show notes so people can just like click on it directly. Oh yeah. Makes sense. Check it all out. Find some good insight and then bring it back into your design teams. Everyone who's listening. And I think another really interesting

exciting part or fascinating part of your journey is to really see how you went from like a designer who was like questioning the whole scene and

really asking like why am I doing that and I know this is like very common like a lot of people want to have a purpose they want to do something they want to give something back and they're not satisfied anymore with just like creating any basic apps where they are not really standing you know behind it they think like why am I doing that then going through this like um

a breakthrough moment where you had like the burnout where you really rethought

everything you're doing and came up with the solution, okay, I need to give something back, something that really makes a difference and has a meaning and then really started from scratch kind of like back then you haven't worked into that in that field and then started by learning, going through all the experiences and this is also something that I found so interesting when we had our pre-talk, our pre-discussion before we had the podcast and

where you also really shared also like the learnings like things didn't work out so well and you were like honestly I don't mind like I will do it again I will do it over again so just the learnings and you never really thought like okay now it's not the right topic for me because you really you really think like this is such an important topic and you do it for the topic and not for like you know becoming famous but this is like the topic and this makes a huge difference I feel when designers finding their

purpose, their mission, what they really want to achieve, what they want to give back and then just go for it. And there will be obstacles but just like that's totally normal. There will be learnings, there will be failures but just like go and try things out and then things naturally fall into place. Like you mentioned with the talks and then another talk comes and then a network, you connect with others and this is like so nice also to build your life around

this purpose that you have I feel this very inspiring it's yeah thank you very thank you very much it's like as I said it's like just continuing what you do right and things one thing comes after after the other and

it sometimes things happen and then a few months later you realize okay this happened for this reason because there i met this person and this person asked me to to to come there and yeah they were asking for workshops so um yeah there for the first time i did a workshop with someone else together and now i also do workshops i don't know like for

So what started for me, like that companies come to me and ask, hey, can you do a workshop in our company? Right. And well, that's great because maybe that also gives me the opportunity to make some money out of this work, which means I can spend more time working on this topic because most of the work is nonprofit. And well, we are not making money.

money out of all these things. But yeah, a big learning was like to be, as you said, being open-minded what happens and just go here, go there and meet new people and the next step will come. Just it's about instead of overthinking things too much, I would say it's a lot about just start something. And even if you do not have like, I don't know, the website ready in the beginning,

whatever right start and then then you will do the website afterwards and then you will have a great website like like we have and there is still a lot of work we have to do right so it's we have a one pager one pager website and yeah it's like start something go out there talk about instead of staying too long in your in your small design chamber and and thinking about things

That's a big learning for me. And also always to be open about where I have to say that, where do the way of life lead me, right? Because things will change. As I tried to explain at the beginning with my journey, right? So

what and how we do with the initiative and what I do now is totally different from, I would say, what I expected two years ago, right? Things changed a lot and it was important to stay open to these. Yeah. Okay. Now it goes more into this direction and yeah, spending a lot of time on these, working out these things and I don't know, doing, spending a lot of time that is, that is not paid at all. Yeah.

still brings me, for example, into a position where hopefully I can make some money now out of these things, right? Because companies ask me and design teams ask me, can you come to our company and, I don't know, speak here or do a workshop here? And this is great and you need to start. And yeah, would I have imagined two years ago that this will be possible this year? No, no way.

or that I don't know met like SSI people like Tim Frick right that's so cool we are we do calls from time to time and it's so it's a really nice person I would say maybe even a friend he became a friend of mine right and I met him too through these things great things happen if you're just just walk on right so the the

the destination is not the goal, but it's the way itself. And sometimes it goes left, sometimes it goes right. Just be open to go wherever it leads. And that's my really important learning, I would say.

I love that. I think those are perfect last words for this episode. I couldn't have said it better, so it's very inspiring, I think, also for like for all designers who have like topics in mind they want to focus on and

are a little bit scared to go outside with it and share content about it. So I think very inspiring for everyone and hopefully motivating for our community here. And also to have a look at the whole topic of sustainable design, what it means, some actionable steps in the network, connect with people and then hopefully also bringing that back into our design practice and what this looks like. Yeah.

thank you tausten so much for being here i really enjoyed our conversation a lot of learnings i also learned a lot of things so it was very inspiring thank you so much thank you so much once more for having me and again it's also for me really inspiring to just discuss these things and and to reflect about things so thank you very much for having me here in your in your wonderful and great podcast

Thank you all so much for listening. You can find all the resources mentioned in the show notes, so you can just check it out and yeah, just get your own experiences. And as always, if you liked the podcast, if this was helpful to you, feel free to either like share it to a colleague or to a friend or give us a five star rating on your podcast platform, iTunes or Spotify. That would be very, very, very helpful.

So thank you so much for listening and hear you in the future.