For the past year I have been part of a UX task force developing the W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines. As the guidelines reach the milestone of Draft Note status, I reflect on what they stand to achieve, and share insights from our process to make these guidelines as useful and usable as possible. Increasingly, websites […]
Read moreLast year, our Green Digital Design Intern audited the Edinburgh Innovations website for digital sustainability, and made several recommendations. This year’s internship went further – researching how users actually interacted with the site and uncovering potential to improve both the site’s UX and its environmental impact. In 2024 the UX Service and the wider Website […]
Read moreA green digital design internship hosted by the UX Service in summer 2025 prompted us to consider how digital housekeeping could support the efforts of the Careers Service team to streamline their website. In the process, the Careers Service emerged as admirable case study, promoting the benefits of combining both UX and digital sustainability for […]
Read moreThe Interactive Content team used ThingLink to create interactive learning materials for two Careers Services projects: ‘Skills For Success Framework’ and ‘Riding the Wave’. They chose ThingLink for its ability to add interactivity to graphics and its ease of embedding into EdWeb. The team collaborated with the Graphics Design service to create engaging and accessible content using ThingLink’s scenes and tags features.
Read moreOk, well not totally meaningless. But it certainly isn’t always the untouchable source of truth that is often perceived to be. Throughout my “Green Web Platforms” internship I have focused so much on trying to find data. Data on energy usage, energy grid carbon intensity, and equipment manufacturing, to be ultimately used as the ingredients […]
Read moreWorking alongside the Digital Marketing Team, we have managed to reduce the page weight of the University’s homepage, www.ed.ac.uk, so that it produces 13 less tonnes of CO2 per year. Implementing the change As part of the wider EdWeb2 update, the university’s homepage has undergone changes to improve its performance and reduce its environmental impact. […]
Read moreAbout me Hiya! My name is Zbigniew, a fourth year undergraduate student doing Product Design at the Edinburgh College of Art. This summer I joined the ranks of the UX team as Green Digital Design Intern, to build on the foundation created by the previous sustainability intern, in order to: improve the University’s web estate […]
Read moreWe’re estimated to save 25 tonnes of CO2 annually because of better web design choices. And that’s just the start… What’s changed? The new EdWeb2 update has made our sites greener! We’ve made two key changes to reduce the page weight of our websites. Simply put, this means the file size of our web pages […]
Read moreThis post was written by LLB student Dervla Craig on her first month as Information and Data Literacy intern this Summer. My name is Dervla and I am going into my second year of the Graduate LLB at the University of Edinburgh. This summer I am doing a 12-week internship with the University’s Information Services […]
Read moreThe question “what is the environmental impact of a digital service?” is very open ended. It’s hard to come up with a neat answer because there is just so much to consider. Even if we restrict our attention to carbon emissions (far from the only environmental impact that digital services have) the question is still […]
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