• Because no one wants digital technology to one day become the number one source of pollution in the world,

    20 Minutes

    is focusing on the digital sobriety of companies this summer.

    Where we are ?

  • In this third episode, we focus on the user experience.

    At the heart of eco-design, it is now a question of doing better, by acting more soberly.

  • But in the future, will companies be able to capture the eyes of users without overdoing it?

It's summer and Spotify, the music listening platform becomes your best ally during the holidays.

In the car or during a drink, you play your favorite summer music – certainly one of the tracks from Beyoncé's new album – without noticing that the platform is broadcasting short videos on a loop.

These are called Canvases.

To sum up, these are clips of 8 seconds on average, which loop during certain titles.

But the flip side is that this Spotify feature uses a lot of battery, bandwidth… and is definitely not eco-friendly.

By definition, video weighs more and consumes significantly more energy.

This is the fundamental problem of the user experience in the age of digital sobriety.

For Anne Faubry, UX Designer and expert in digital eco-design, it is now impossible to imagine the design of a site without reviewing its ecological footprint.

“The user experience sometimes wants to be enriched with features that are superfluous.

But when you do that, you don't realize that it's done at the expense of something else, including accessibility and a degraded connection.

According to the expert, the vast majority of features created today for the user are ultimately never used.

Stand out from competition

But how to explain the choice of Spotify?

Why offer artists the integration of an invisible video when the user mainly chooses the platform for listening?

According to the Point de MIR association, which has been raising awareness about digital sobriety since 2014, the opportunity is not innocent.

“The company is not only in the choice of “can I be pretty while being eco-designed”.

It is also motivated by the attention economy”, regrets Bela Loto Hiffler, the founder of the association.

As long as the economic system is based on competition, design will always be around what Bela Loto Hiffler calls “captology”.

But how to get out?

For some, like Anne Faubry, it is necessary to return to more sober sites by being simpler.

"We often have the image that a sober site is like a throwback to the Stone Age that would take us back to very ugly websites from the 2000s. But that's not the case.

There are plenty of eco-designed sites that are accessible and you don't necessarily realize that they are eco-designed.

In addition, they will have beneficial impacts, in particular on accessibility and superconstant access,” argues the UX designer.

Others will add that it is also necessary to come back as close as possible to the needs of the user and get out of what is called “the syndrome of obésiciel” – software that consumes far too much memory and system resources.

“Today, we choose a functionality before the need,” notes Bela Lotto Hiffler.

Whereas eco-design means choosing the need with the functionality that goes with it”.

The SNCF derails

A few years ago, this was the very example of the difference between the Train Line site – at the time “Captain train” – and the SNCF.

The two find themselves competitors in the reservation of trains.

But at that time, the SNCF misses the eco-design stoppage and locks itself into a site that is far too complicated for the traveler.

That was before the so unloved SNCF Connect, but the historical example still reserves some cold sweats for Frédéric Bordage, responsible digital specialist.

"At the time, Captain Train's promise was to say: 'You're going to enjoy booking a train ticket.'

On the contrary, the SNCF wanted to sell a rich user experience with the indications of a precise and complete journey.

But in reality, the user doesn't care and doesn't want an incomprehensible search engine,” recalls the specialist.

In UX jargon, this is called the “Minimum valuable product”.

“It aims to design the minimum product, the basic promise: to find a train ticket.

A sober site, not pretty, bare, a real tool.

This is what the users are asking for”, translates Frédéric Bordage.

A shared load

Eco-design players are now unanimous: going back to more sober sites means making them faster and more efficient, while reducing their ecological footprint.

Only, if companies still have a long way to go to achieve a green aesthetic, they are not the only ones who can play a role.

According to Anne Faubry, the State must also go much further.

"Last November, when the law aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of digital technology in France was passed, the requirements of the initial text were largely revised downwards".

Autoplay, for example – the automatic reading of videos – was supposed to be prohibited, but eventually disappeared from the text of the law.

The future surely also belongs to the user who – if he cannot shake things up on his own – has some tools in hand.

On some sites, for example, it can remove certain features that weigh too heavily.

This is particularly the case for Spotify, which offers music fans to deactivate the Canvas option [in the “Playback” tab of “Preferences”].

By the Web

Responsible cloud, eco-designed sites, slow tech… Do companies have the means to think digitally in a reasonable way?

  • By the Web

  • Digital

  • Ecology

  • Internet

  • Mobile app

  • Spotify