Re: "Green Mode" Design

That's another set of great leads. I'm writing a follow up, which will look
more at the technical implementation details. There are many vectors out
there that could be part of green mode design, and I'm considering for
proof of concept.

I see 4 customisable modes/levels of green mode design:

1) climate aware - optimisation without degradation (unused tab suspension,
climate aware metrics/monitoring, ad/tracker blocking/service worker
enabled intelligent caching.
2) climate friendly - graceful degradation of performance (all the above +
blocked image or videos by default, clicking on an image or video link
gives you minimal available quality, and podcast mode (sound only), reader
mode (transcript only) video streaming, more aggressive service worker
caching).
3) climate first - maximum graceful degradation without loss of core
functionality (no javascript, "print mode", bare minimal css, maximum
backward device compatibility,  accessibility options (e.g. only text to
speech including alt for images, and no other visuals; change font colour
or size, etc - this + backward compatibility increases climate resilience)
4) smart mode - customisable default triggers for switching between 1-3
(High CPU, high daily CO2 consumption, full screen mode (degrade all other
tabs), non-green cloud host detected, high CO2 website, time of day (this
could link to focus mode design thinking).

I think all of this can be operationalised already:
1) client side via browser extensions, but obviously it will be less
seamless with more overhead than at the developer level.
2) developer side via graceful degradation, like client caching both high
performance and low fi versions of sites in the client, a bit like
prerendering is used already in SPAs to serve crawlers and users different
versions. You could also design every app and specially page for graceful
degradation to work with low or no js. A lot of accessibility design would
also be pertinent. And give your users high, mid and low performance
options on the UI.

What cannot be done yet:
3) Browsers to implement much more comprehensive green mode features than
Edge's energy efficient mode. If we could empower service worker caching on
the client side, for instance, that could be a game changer. If you could
toggle something that implements stale while revalidate strategies if no
similar service workers are active, you could drastically reduce web
traffic and consumption. If you could download rather than stream by
default, with streaming only as a buffer until download completes, that
would also make a difference. If you could integrate CO2 counters into the
browser itself, which has the most direct information to hand. Etc.

4) Specifications and standards bodies could create "green mode" standards
and protocols. Sites that conform to these standards could be prioritised
by search engines and similar incentives. Embracing green mode design (user
controlled) and not just behind the scenes optimisation could also make its
way to OpenApi and AsyncApi specs. The reason for green mode (graceful
degradation) as opposed to (or rather in combination with) default
performance optimisation,  is that the "generally acceptable use case" does
not allow for low intensity alternatives for specific use cases and
responsible consumption. You couldn't implement no images on all sites by
decree. But you can at least make it easily and conveniently possible as an
option where appropriate.

At the moment the 4 key constituents (consumers, devs, browsers and
standards) are at different places in this design trajectory. If we could
get the overlap to critical mass we could radically improve our industry's
environmental impact on emissions, waste and raw materials, with many
associated downstream benefits.

Well, there goes an unplanned preview of part 2 of my blog series! Thanks
so very much for engaging.

On Mon, 18 Jul 2022, 15:06 Laurent Devernay, <laurent.devernay@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
> There's a lot that can be done about green browsing.
> For example, with Edge (
> https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/DevTools/issues/26) but this is also
> some ongoing discussion with some people working on Chrome.
> A french company called Lisio is working on this with its proprietary
> browser extension but their claims should be based on some measurements :
> https://lisio.fr/projets-compensation.php
>
> I think this is a great idea to offer a browser extension that can reduce
> the impact of browsing and there were some discussions about this here too
> :
> https://github.com/lowwebtech/low-web-extension
> https://graphism.fr/quel-design-pour-un-navigateur-low-tech/
>
> The interesting part would be to avoid some unnecessary requests, like
> some ad blockers.
> I'm going to look further into the blog post shared by Ismael but this is
> an essential topics and I was planning on writing a section about this on
> the upcoming Sustainability chapter for the next Web Almanac.
> See you soon,
>
>
>
> Laurent.
>
> On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 10:24 AM Thierry LEBOUCQ <
> tleboucq@greenspector.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> Thank you fpr sharing.
>>
>>
>> a public feed-back we made with Atos on website design with EcoBranding.
>>
>> We measured energy and IT fresources on real devices for a lot of
>> different parameters on graphical design.
>>
>> we made also an environmental projection.
>>
>>
>> https://atos.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/atos-ecobranding-report.pdf
>>
>>
>> Thierry
>>
>>
>> *Thierry LEBOUCQ*
>> *Chairman*
>> + 33 9 51 44 55 79 | + 33 6 88 71 50 50
>> GREENSPECTOR – 6 rue Rose Dieng-Kuntz – CS90729 – 44307 NANTES CEDEX 3
>> www.greenspector.com <http://greenspector.com/> | @Green_spector
>> <https://twitter.com/Green_spector>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *De :* Ismael Velasco <ismaelv.dev@gmail.com>
>> *Envoyé :* samedi 16 juillet 2022 17:33
>> *À :* Chris Adams
>> *Cc :* public-sustyweb@w3.org
>> *Objet :* Re: "Green Mode" Design
>>
>> Chris, this is incredibly helpful. You are a walking cornucopia, and I
>> hugely appreciate the link dump.
>>
>> I love the idea of colour signals and other feedback designs. One
>> question I have is whether such constant monitoring and adjusting would
>> itself be carbon intensive to implement?
>>
>> My absolute preference would be to have indicators that feed back live,
>> as well as cumulatively, and can auto-adjust settings (smart green mode),
>> but I worry it would add emissions along with valuable information,
>> compared with getting the same metrics on command, rather than
>> continuously. On command however would be a less effective behavioural
>> nudge.
>>
>> On Sat, 16 Jul 2022, 16:08 Chris Adams, <chris@thegreenwebfoundation.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> HI Ismael!
>>>
>>> Thanks for sharing this - I really enjoyed the post.
>>>
>>> I’ll share a few links that might be of interest for further reading,
>>> based on the ideas I read about in the post.
>>>
>>> *Lucia Ye, and her project, OnlignOS*
>>>
>>> Lucia Ye did some suuuper cool work in this field for her masters
>>> thesis, at the Royal College of Art in the UK.
>>>
>>> She wrote a piece for Branch magazine a couple of years back that I
>>> think is relevant, and she links to her thesis where she expands on the
>>> ideas in more detail.
>>>
>>>
>>> https://branch.climateaction.tech/issues/issue-1/design-for-carbon-aware-digital-experiences/
>>>
>>> *For greener websites, think GOLD*
>>>
>>> Where I work, the green web foundation, we’ve been talking drawing
>>> inspiration from how the accessibility movement were able to set norms
>>> about making digital services more inclusive, and apply the to the domain
>>> of sustainability with digital services too
>>>
>>> This 30 minute talk with transcript might be worth a look - we took the
>>> ideas of POUR (perceivable, operable, understandble, robust), and tried
>>> coming up with another set of properties, GOLD standing for  Green, Open,
>>> Lean, Distributed. The talk and deck with a transcript is below:
>>>
>>> https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/fosdem/
>>>
>>> *Carbon aware websites, and carbon aware browsers.*
>>>
>>> Branch, the digital magazine has a design that changes in response to
>>> carbon intensity signals. We were thinking of graceful degradation
>>> principles here, as a way to highlight the materiality of the internet, but
>>> also foregrounding some of the ideas of graceful degradation you refer to
>>> as a way to keep designs inclusive.
>>>
>>>
>>> https://branch.climateaction.tech/issues/issue-1/designing-branch-sustainable-interaction-design-principles/
>>>
>>> The library we use is below, and installable from npm with few code
>>> examples:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/thegreenwebfoundation/grid-intensity
>>>
>>> I’m hoping we can port across some of the work and ideas on a similar
>>> golang library, back to the js version in the coming months, and we’d love
>>> to work with others here.
>>>
>>> https://github.com/thegreenwebfoundation/grid-intensity-go
>>>
>>> Also, inspired by Lucia’s work, we wanted to try building a ‘branch'
>>> extension into a browser as well, because we felt this was something that
>>> browser could do natively as part of the web platform.
>>>
>>> It turns out with that Firefox at least, you can programatically change
>>> the browser theme, on a timer.
>>>
>>> This means you can animate transitions in the chrome to have it provide
>>> ambient signals as you browse - like smoothly transitioning between colours
>>> in response to how green the grids is, and so on.
>>>
>>> You an see an issue where we expand on this, and share some code samples
>>> for doing so below:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/thegreenwebfoundation/web-extension/issues/34
>>>
>>> *Eco modes for browsers*
>>>
>>> Finally, going back a key question in your post - I know that with
>>> Michelle Thorne at Mozilla ran a session at Mozfest in 2019, exploring a
>>> bunch of ideas in a browser context with her Eco mode session.
>>>
>>> There’s a load of ideas in there that really resonate with your article
>>> too 👍🏽
>>>
>>>
>>> https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/firefox-eco-mode-brainstorming-how-can-the-internet-tackle-the-climate-emergency/46582
>>>
>>> Hope that is interesting for others, and apologies in advance for the
>>> link dump 😅
>>>
>>> Chris Adams
>>>
>>> Executive Director
>>>
>>> w: thegreenwebfoundation.org
>>> e: chris@thegreenwebfoundation.org
>>> t: @mrchrisadams
>>>
>>> German Office
>>> Naunynstrasse 40
>>> 10999 Berlin
>>> Germany
>>>
>>> See our contact page for more details
>>> <https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/contact/>
>>>
>>> On 16. Jul 2022, at 13:33, Ismael Velasco <ismaelv.dev@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello all.
>>>
>>> At Chris Adams' urging I am posting here seeking your feedback on a blog
>>> post proposing the adoption of what I'm calling "green mode design",
>>> integrating the design principles of "graceful degradation" and "user
>>> control and freedom" for emissions reduction, climate justice and extended
>>> hardware obsolescence with all the downstream benefits in terms of mineral
>>> extraction, waste and lifecycle emissions.
>>>
>>> https://ismaelvelasco.dev/green-mode-design-through-graceful-degradation
>>>
>>> If you know of any examples, please let me know. I will be building an
>>> open source POC browser extension in the coming weeks.
>>>
>>>
>>>