Several techniques have been developed over the years for capturing sustainability requirements including capturing social and personal sustainability issues e.g. related to discuss ethics and values in connection to software solutions. One of these techniques is the Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF) which covers both environmental, social, individual, technical, and economic sustainability. We have used this technique in both industrial and academic settings, and in this paper, we will share some of the experiences with the technique and point to improvements. Better tool and method support is perceived useful to be able to have more detailed analysis of different aspects of sustainability and follow this up in software development over a longer period of time.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) plays an important role in assuring both
social, environmental and economic sustainability. The need for the ICT field to address
sustainability has been acknowledged for a long time in areas such as information systems [
As seen in [
In section 2 we will present SusAF in detail. In section 3, we elaborate on the method including the usage of the method in different settings. In section 4 we discuss experiences from the use and point to both positive aspects and areas with room for improvement. Section 5 concludes the paper, pointing to further work.
The five dimensions of sustainability used in SusAF are often depicted as a pentagon as seen in Figure 1 below. For each of the five dimensions, the model distinguishes between immediate, enabling and structural effects, corresponding to the first-, second- and thirdorder effects described briefly above.
This pentagon model has been used in the development of a model for sustainability
evaluation of ICT projects [
The model discussing this from a software engineering point of view.
The five dimensions can be described in more detail in the following way [
The environmental dimension covers the use and stewardship of natural resources. It includes material and resources, waste and pollution, biodiversity, energy and logistics.
The technical dimension covers the ability to maintain and evolve artificial systems (such as software) over time, including aspects of maintainability, usability, adaptability, security, and scalability.
The individual dimension covers health, lifelong learning, privacy, safety, and agency.
The social dimension covers relationships between individuals and groups. This includes sense of community, trust, inclusiveness and diversity, equity, participation, and communication.
The economic dimension covers financial value, customer relationship management, supply chain, governance and innovation.
Aspects within these dimensions are often interlinked, so that an effect in one area can have a positive or negative effect on another effect in the same or different dimension, on another level.
A standard technique has been developed for the usage of this framework to gather requirements for doing analysis of a setting in a facilitated manner. A workbook describes this process accommodated to different timings typically between 2 and 4 hours according to the process depicted in Figure 2.
An important part of the framework in addition to the pentagon diagram and the process, is a set of driving questions within each subarea of the dimensions as described above (privacy, safety, energy etc.).
We have used the SusAF framework in many settings, both within academia in connection with courses, in research and in industrial projects, and in workshops together with practitioners. The technique is meant to be generally useful, thus we find it interesting to bring together experiences from quite different usage settings.
The technique has typically been used in facilitated workshops, in some cases with a followup. The experience reported from here are from the following cases: • • • •
Description of setting: The aim of the project was to redesign a MAR application with a focus on sustainability design. The motivation for re-designing was the poor technical sustainability in third-party service and therefore, sustainability design was chosen as an integrated approach for redesign. A workshop was arranged. The objective of the workshop was to discuss the app’s sustainability issues and envision the development of the app. Five participants who were involved in the previous version of the app joined the workshop. Participants were mostly developers, and one participant had a design background.
Detailed description of how the technique was used: Before the workshop, previous work in the field of MAR travel guide apps was searched to create a potential list of sustainability issues and topics that could be relevant discussion topics during the workshop. Then, a workshop was organized to envision the sustainability of the system within a decade and to capture chains of effects. During the workshop, two researchers together with participants, worked on a mapping exercise based on SusAF. For that purpose, information material about the technique was sent to participants beforehand. The workshop started with a brief introduction to the project and the identified sustainability issues, followed by an introduction to SusAF. Roles were assigned, where the participants were responsible to discuss one dimension each of SusAF but could contribute to all. Then, participants were given three tasks: a mapping exercise, levels of effects and chain of effects. In all tasks, participants worked first individually and then in the group. In addition, driving questions were used to spark discussions, or redirect when it was needed. The workshop lasted approximately 2 hours and, at the end, facilitators concluded by summarizing findings and discussing experiences. Finally, sustainability issues with immediate effects were selected for further development into design suggestions for an MAR app.
Description of learning related to the use of technique: Overall, participants reported positive experience with SusAF. The stepwise process of the tool gave participants a systematic and integrated approach to work with sustainability design, with guidance through specific tasks to follow and a clear sequence of steps, ensuring that all relevant aspects and dimensions of sustainability are addressed. Especially for the extraction of design suggestions, it allowed formulation of requirements that were easily translated into design suggestions. Regarding the teamwork, SusAF allowed multidisciplinary view on sustainability and role-playing activity for participants.
There were also some challenges associated with the use of SusAF. First, there is a lack of collective understanding of what sustainability means for software development and how to identify sustainability issues. Identifying such issues and mapping them to dimensions is not an easy and straightforward task. It requires preparation, research and benchmarking existing MAR apps or similar technologies to identify common sustainability challenges and best practices. Furthermore, applying SusAF demands good understanding of the framework and its application, which may require specialized knowledge or training. Finally, translating sustainability issues into design suggestions is an iterative and ongoing process, where a deep understanding of sustainability issues, user needs, and the application context are needed.
Description of setting: Practitioners in public sector and IT industry who did not know each other in advance signed up to one of ten parallel workshops at a conference. They worked physically with different colored post-its on a pentagon-poster, and with a flip-over to support the prioritization of ideas. The participants worked on a partly artificial case (i.e., the case was real but was not from the participants themselves).
Detailed description of how the technique was used: The workshop lasted four hours. An one hour introduction to sustainability issues and SusAF was followed by a three-hour workshop, including a 30-minute break and a 30 minute wrap-up. The workshop followed the prescribed process: The case was introduced. Each participant devised 2-3 impacts per dimension individually, with different colors for positive and negative effects. Then all points were discussed and prioritized by the whole group. Points that were regarded as high priority were put on the A1 SusAF board as illustrated in Figure 3. T hen the different effects were connected wherever relations were identified. Two facilitators helped.
Description of learning related to the use of technique: Not knowing each other at the outset, it took some time for the participants to become comfortable. In such setting it is often useful to work on a situation not being from one of the organizations. It was an advantage to do the prioritization i.e. not put everything on the pentagon from the start. Still the middle of the chart became cluttered, and it was hard to model the relationships on the board. That the pentagon looks like a spider diagram also made some participants a bit confused in the beginning. Participants gave positive feedback on the usefulness of the technique but did not feel comfortable about running such workshops themselves.
Description of setting: The setting was a mandatory 7.5 ECTS course on CSCW and user centered design for 1st year students in a business-oriented IT bachelor program. The course included a set of assignments together comprising a small design project where groups of 4-5 students worked on a solution to be implemented in Sharepoint.
The overall objective from an educational perspective was to enrich the course with learning activities that would contribute to achievement of the existing learning outcomes. Including a SusAF analysis in the projects was to help the students become more aware of sustainability effects of their proposed solutions and acquire skills in identifying sustainability effects in other settings.
Detailed description of how the technique was used: At the time of using SusAF, the students had started work on personas and scenarios for their design projects. A half-day facilitated SusAF workshop was provided within normal lecture time in the course. Attendance was strongly encouraged, results from the workshop being part of an assignment to be handed in, and close to everyone (ca. 40 students) in class attended. In the workshop, an introduction to the framework was given by the instructor, including examples referring to their case. Next, the students worked in teams to develop SusAD diagrams for their own solutions. Key adaptations of the process include: • • •
• • •
Instructions were given that the groups might choose two or three main types of functionality/features of their design and make one diagram for each.
Presentation of the results in were made in clusters of groups (3 groups presenting to each other).
Evaluation of the use of SusAF was covered indirectly as workshop results were part of an assignment and as students reflected on the course activities as part of the summative evaluation (pass/fail) in the course.
Description of learning related to the use of technique: The task and technique were easy to understand for the students. Only limited facilitation of the groupwork was needed. Having a similar (although not identical) case among the participating groups made it possible for the instructor to create examples that all participants could easily relate to, making the introduction to the technique efficient and effective. The sustainability analysis was considered meaningful considering the overall learning outcomes and activities in the course. The intervention demonstrated that it is possible to enrich a curriculum with insights on sustainability by use of SusAF without necessarily making resource-consuming changes to a course and without creating the feeling of sustainability focus being enforced top-down and/or in a superficial way. The students reported getting new insights/ideas from other groups presenting their diagrams. Focusing on distinct aspects/functionalities/features in separate diagrams helped avoid cluttering of the diagrams (but at the known expense of not being able to make connections between sustainability effects across the diagrams).
Description of setting: SusAF was used in connection to a service design process following a
double diamond approach [
The second part was to take up the first analysis and see to what extent it was changed based on new knowledge achieved, while developing and evaluating a prototype, and report changes in the sustainability analysis in the final project report 2 months after.
Description of learning related to the use of technique: The students were quickly able to start using the techniques on their initial ideas. They had discussed their ideas up front and were at the time quite familiar with each other. Having a lecture on the technique before using it was also useful. We witnessed at least one group learning during the project as demonstrated by the final prototype including aspects not in the original idea. These were social and individual aspects. A tool for documenting the results in a more persistent way would have been useful, according to the participants. In the case, the results were documented by taking pictures of the board.
In general, those who work with SusAF for the first time find it possible to use the technique after a relatively short introduction on sustainability and the framework. Many are positively surprised, especially to find that it not only about environmental sustainability, but also covers the social and individual aspects. It is important, though, that the first usage is facilitated. Below is a summary of possible improvements.
The workshop-version of SusAF available on the web [
Participants tend to be satisfied with the outcome of a SusAF workshop, having
collaboratively identified relevant sustainability effects and seen connections between
them. However, to get the most out of the analysis in the longer term, we see a need for
guidelines for the long-term usage of the results. There is existing research on e.g., how to
bring SusAF into agile development, but this must be further experimented with [
As found in the MAR-project, it is often necessary with preparatory work before the workshop, both for facilitators to understand the domain, and for the participants to quickly start using the approach when at the workshop.
The technique is primarily manual to be used in a physical workshop setting. This can
provide a good process to brainstorm and come up with initial ideas. When many ideas
come up it is however not easy to work with the diagram, and to bring forward the results
e.g., to design activities. Better tool support is needed, for the immediate analysis, for
bringing the result further, and for adding more detail, including assumptions for the issues
raised. This tool support should be linked to a proper modelling method. In the literature,
e.g. SAF [
The pentagon-shape itself has some challenges. In our cases we have seen that it gave
some participants the erroneous impression that it is a spider-diagram. Another challenge
of the diagram layout is that most of the ideas are on the immediate level, which offers the
most limited space. This quickly leads to cluttering even when concerns are prioritized
before being put into the board. This problem might be addressed by simply changing the
proportions in the diagram, and with better tool support. A general concern regarding the
use of digital tools is that their use should not get in the way of the modeling process of the
humans [
It is challenging at times to decide the level of a sustainability effect, and more support
for the appropriate selection of level should be provided. In [
The SusAF framework has been used in several projects and project settings. Many pilots of the
use of the technique have been conducted by us and others. There is now a need for studies that
address the use of the technique in more detail and considers the process over longer time, e.g.,
how to support the development and evolution of (IT)-systems. In an educational context,
learning outcomes (e.g. related to discipline knowledge or sustainability knowledge) should be
evaluated after a certain time period. Also, one should look at support for doing more systematic
evaluation using e.g., MAM – Method Acceptance Model [
This paper provides early results on the experiences of use of SusAF, collected in an informal way. In later project and usage situation, we aim to follow the use more systematically, to have even better grounding for our proposals to update the technique.
Thanks to all participants and organizers in the workshops reported upon in this paper.