Environmental (in)considerations in the Design of Smartphone Settings

TL;DR

This paper examines the lack of environmental considerations in smartphone settings, identifies common anti-patterns, and proposes design principles to promote more sustainable digital practices.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of current environmental settings in mobile OS and apps, identifies pervasive anti-patterns, and offers a design workbook with principles to enhance environmental sustainability.

Findings

Environmental settings are often set to intensive options by default.

Settings lack accessibility and explanations of environmental impact.

Design principles can promote moderate and sustainable digital practices.

Abstract

Designing for sufficiency is one of many approaches that could foster more moderate and sustainable digital practices. Based on the Sustainable Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature, we identify five environmental settings categories. However, our analysis of three mobile OS and nine representative applications shows an overall lack of environmental concerns in settings design, leading us to identify six pervasive anti-patterns. Environmental settings, where they exist, are set on the most intensive option by default. They are not presented as such, are not easily accessible, and offer little explanation of their impact. Instead, they encourage more intensive use. Based on these findings, we create a design workbook that explores design principles for environmental settings: presenting the environmental potential of settings; shifting to environmentally neutral states; previewing effects to encourage moderate use; rethinking defaults; facilitating settings access and; exploring more frugal settings. Building upon this workbook, we discuss how settings can tie individual behaviors to systemic factors.