Strategic UX · Research and strategy lead

Sustainable design did not need another manifesto. It needed proof.

GreenPixel is a community-led award platform concept. Designers already agreed sustainability mattered. What they lacked was shared criteria and a reason to document the decision, so I proposed we stop explaining sustainable design and start recognising it. GreenPixel gives designers both: criteria they can apply, and proof they can show.

My role
Research and strategy lead
Team & I owned
Mariana Bozano, Palida “Sai” Pongmekin, Oluwatosin Kazeem and Duco Boomsma.I owned the desk research and survey synthesis, the pivot to recognition, the card-sorting workshop, stakeholder framing, and the walkthrough video. Not mine: the visual identity, or most of the screen design.
Challenge
  • Brief from BHD Playground, with Ecoforma and Green Office HvA
  • Find the leverage designers hold over digital sustainability
  • Whatever we built had to be applied in practice, not just proposed
Deliverable
  • A tested award platform concept, not a launched product
  • Research reframed the problem from raising awareness to enabling participation
  • Over twenty guidelines under five lenses, sharing one proof trail across two journeys
  • Testing with three designers who had entered or judged awards led to four changes: action-led entry, visible reasons for each win, the award ranked above badges, and legitimacy shown before submission
Design
View the Figma file (opens in a new tab)
Date
December 2025 · seven weeks
GreenPixel became a clickable product concept, not only an award object. The page on the screen is the real About page from the prototype, scrolling the way a visitor would; the laptop and its setting are generated.

01 · The problem

Designers agreed sustainability mattered. Almost none could point at a decision where it had changed anything.

Every designer I spoke to agreed that sustainability mattered. Almost none could name a moment in their last project where that belief had changed a decision. That gap is what GreenPixel set out to close, and it is the reason the project never became a campaign.

  • An iron GreenPixel Awards cube in the sand among wind-bent marram grass, with the grey North Sea breaking on the shore behind it
  • A cork GreenPixel Awards cube on moss between tall tree trunks in a misty forest
  • A wooden GreenPixel Awards cube on grey gravel at the edge of a shallow river
  • Two hands holding a stone GreenPixel Awards cube, its engraved mark turned to the light, against blurred dunes

Never on the sprint board

Sustainability is the first thing cut when a deadline tightens, because it has no named owner and no line in the acceptance criteria.

Too broad to act on

It covers carbon, accessibility, longevity, data and attention at once, so two people in the same room mean different things by it.

Nothing to show afterwards

A designer can make a careful decision and have no way to demonstrate it happened.

No reason to bother

Effort that cannot be demonstrated does not travel into a review, a pitch or a portfolio.

Sustainability is rarely rejected. It is quietly deprioritised.

  • A dark website hero where a liquid chrome ribbon turns slowly behind a large lowercase headline
  • A dark website where a chart draws itself in, thin lines sweeping across a grid while glossy bars grow from the baseline
  • A dark website with a grid of product cards, each holding a rendered object, one card at a time lighting up as if hovered
  • A dark website where a chart draws itself in, thin lines sweeping across a grid while glossy bars grow from the baseline
  • A dark website where a deep teal menu panel slides over the page and four large menu words stack in

The award photographs and the website clips are generated imagery, used as atmosphere. Everything further down this page that documents the project is the real artefact.

02 · Evidence

The survey I synthesised showed the blocker was method, not belief.

I led the desk research and the survey synthesis. I wanted to find the exact point where intention stopped turning into practice.

Twenty designers answered the closed questions on familiarity and practice. Thirteen of them also wrote free-text answers about what blocked them in real projects.

Familiarity with sustainable digital design

  • Never heard of it, 2 of 20 respondents
  • Heard of it, 10 of 20 respondents
  • Basic understanding, 4 of 20 respondents
  • Familiar, 3 of 20 respondents
  • Actively applying it, 1 of 20 respondents

Closed questions answered by 20 designers. Percentages are not used at this sample size. The counts are reported as they were collected.

The decisive number

13 of 20

placed themselves in the same band: interested in sustainable design, but not yet applying it. One described themselves as actively applying it.

That single respondent changed my reading of the problem. If almost nobody is practising, there is almost no practice to learn from, and every team starts from zero. The barrier was not persuasion. Nobody had a method, an example, or a reason to write down what they had done.

Criteria clarified the standard. They did not create participation.

Two workshop participants at a table covered in printed guideline cards, grouping them into themes

I made and led a card-sorting workshop with two designers who knew the project, using every candidate guideline the team had gathered. Sai and I turned the result into five named lenses, which the final concept still uses.

The groups were not the valuable part. Watching where people hesitated was. Both argued about wording far more than about substance, which told me the language was doing the blocking.

Then came the finding that redirected the project. Both sorted the criteria willingly, and neither could say why they would ever submit their own work against them. We had made the standard clearer without giving anyone a reason to meet it.

Card sorting with two designers, using printed candidate guidelines.

Five decisions, and what each one rests on

  1. The Environmental lens from the GreenPixel guidelines: two concrete moves, energy and asset reduction, each with what to do

    01

    Give designers a lens to apply, not a position to agree with

    From the survey
    13 of 20 were interested but not applying it
    Reading
    No method, and no permission to spend time on one
  2. The featured project in the GreenPixel curated gallery, marked Gold, with the lenses it was recognised for

    02

    Publish recognised work as inspectable examples

    From the survey
    One respondent was actively applying it
    Reading
    Almost no visible practice to learn from, so each team starts from zero
  3. The five GreenPixel lenses, Intentional, Trust and Safety, Inclusive, Resilient and Environmental, each with its guidelines

    03

    Group the output into five named lenses

    From card sorting
    Card sorting produced heavy overlap and inconsistent language
    Reading
    Too broad to act on as a single instruction
  4. The last step of a GreenPixel entry, Sustainability Approach, asking the designer to explain the decisions and trade-offs behind the work

    04

    Set criteria per category, and require reasoning with each entry

    From card sorting and interviews
    Nobody could describe what a good outcome looked like
    Reading
    Without shared criteria, effort cannot be compared or defended
  5. The GreenPixel ecosystemGreenPixel sits between four parties. Designers supply the work, agencies make the time defensible, the jury lends judgement and partners lend legitimacy. Each one only takes part because the others do.GreenPixelAWARD PLATFORMDesignerssupply the workPartnerslend legitimacyJurylends judgementAgenciesmake the time defensible

    05

    Design for an ecosystem, not a single user

    From the business model canvas
    The business model only held with agencies, jury and partners in it
    Reading
    A designer-only tool has no legitimacy and no organisational stake

Step 1 of 6

Submit your project

Step 1 of 6

Submit your project

The entry flow from the prototype, step by step: choose a category, describe the work, upload it, and explain the decisions behind it. The screens are the real prototype; the laptop and its setting are generated.
Business-model mapping, used to test the proposition as an ecosystem.

The business model canvas was our own addition to the brief. We brought it in to make clear where the platform would sit in the market, and who would carry it besides the designers.

I mapped it early, because a platform that only works for designers has no reason to exist inside an agency. Faraday Digital Agency, our industry mentor, pushed us the same way: treat this as a business case, not a nice-to-have.

The research did not tell us what to build. It told us what the product would have to earn.

03 · The decision

I proposed we stop explaining sustainable design and start recognising it.

Week one produced a manifesto. Accurate, agreed with by everyone, and it gave nobody anything to do differently on Monday. I argued we were solving the wrong half of the problem: the work was informing people who were already informed, and it needed to activate them instead.

The evidence was already in front of us. Thirteen of twenty called themselves interested but not applying. Two workshop participants sorted criteria happily and could not say why they would submit anything. Neither is an awareness problem.

Framing board, sprint one

Design Awards for Sustainable Digital Design

A design award where designers redesign existing digital products to make them more appealing and more sustainable. Designers gain visibility and clients, companies get free high-quality sustainable work and early access to talent, while the project proves that sustainability can create real business value in digital design.

The concept as it was first written down. The business-value argument Faraday later pushed us on is already in it.
  • A leaf with a factory skyline cut out of it
  • A portrait beneath a concrete structure, lit from one side

Sustainability gets cut first

Made before any of the research existed. It turned out to be the one thing the survey confirmed without qualification.

Design with purpose. Make it desirable.

The ambition the work was aiming at, stated before we had any method for reaching it.

Directions we ruled out

Rejected

Sustainability manifesto

Asked designers to endorse a position most of them already held, and gave them nothing to do differently on Monday.

Rejected

Scoring or certification

Scoring unfinished work rewards reporting skill over design decisions, and invites the greenwashing we were trying to avoid.

Rejected

Education course

Addressed awareness, which the survey had shown was not the binding constraint.

Kept

The guideline system

Guidelines explained sustainable design well, and nothing in them created a reason to document the effort or share it. That made them necessary and not sufficient, so I argued for keeping them and giving them somewhere to lead instead of discarding them with the directions above.

This is the decision the rest of the product is built on: the guideline system became Improve, and the award became Prove.

The brief

A manifesto and a guideline hub that explain sustainable digital design and rely on intrinsic motivation

The reframe

A community-led award that makes effort visible, comparable and worth documenting, with guidelines retained as the working half

The synthesis fixed the direction. Pressure to design sustainably already reaches designers from outside their own team, from clients, law, peers and the public, and on its own it stays outside the work. In the centre sit four levers we could design for: the designer's own standard, the moment the effort is named, the peer group that makes that standard visible, and whatever makes the loop repeat instead of running once.

Recognition is also where the platform borrows credibility it cannot generate alone. A jury and named partners supply the legitimacy that turns a personal claim into something an agency can defend to a client.

The synthesis: GreenPixel Awards as a self-sustaining loopGreenPixel Awards in the centre. Around it a turning ring of four levers that feed each other in order: Self, Recognition, Community, Reinforcing, and back to Self. Outside, pressures from beyond the designer's organisation push inward: client scrutiny, accessibility law, carbon reporting, peer critique, public expectation and investor questions.Client scrutinyAccessibility lawCarbon reportingPeer critiquePublic expectationInvestor questionsSelfRecognitionCommunityReinforcingGreenPixelAwards
The synthesis, redrawn: the four levers it named turn as one loop around the award. The six pressures outside are examples of the judgement a designer meets beyond their own team, drawn for this page; they are not survey findings.
  • Sprint 1, weeks 1 to 2: Explore, frame, pivot
  • Sprint 2, weeks 3 to 4: Guidelines refinement
  • Sprint 3, weeks 5 to 7: Co-create workshop
  • Research, from week 1 to week 4
  • Guidelines to award platform, from week 1 to week 3
  • Survey and interviews, from week 2 to week 4
  • Workshop, from week 3 to week 5
  • Prototype v1, feedback feast, from week 4 to week 6
  • Week 1 output: Manifesto
  • Week 2 output: Guidelines
  • Week 3 output: Guidelines
  • Week 5 output: First prototype
  • Week 7 output: Refine and testing

Three sprints across seven weeks, from the team’s own sprint board. The manifesto and the pivot to an award platform both sit inside the first sprint.

Every direction we ruled out failed on the same question: who has a reason to act on it?

04 · The product

One platform, two moments: improve during the work, prove after it.

I argued for keeping the guideline system because the award only works if there is something to enter, and a way to have done the work well in the first place. Guidelines handle the project while it is being made. The award handles what happens once it is finished.

During the work

Improve

The working half. It turns a broad ambition into one decision a designer can make inside a live project.

  1. 01

    Guideline

    A lens narrows the ambition to one reviewable decision.

  2. 02

    Trade-off

    It names what is being balanced, rather than issuing a rule.

  3. 03

    Action

    The designer changes something concrete in the work.

  4. 04

    EvidenceProof trail

    The reasoning is captured while it is still fresh.

After the work

Prove

The proving half. It gives the effort somewhere to go, and the community something specific to learn from.

  1. 01

    Entry type

    Concept or live product, so unfinished work still qualifies.

  2. 02

    Category

    Compared with work of a similar kind and seniority.

  3. 03

    ProofProof trail

    Evidence of the decision, not a claim about a measured outcome.

  4. 04

    Explanation

    The reasoning is submitted alongside the artefact.

  5. 05

    Recognition

    A jury and the community respond, and the response stays attached to the work.

The proof trail

One proof trail, captured at two different moments.

Evidence recorded while improving is the same evidence submitted for recognition. That is the reason both halves belong on a single platform rather than in two products.

Improve · the guideline system

Sai and I named the five lenses: Intentional, Trust and Safety, Inclusive, Resilient and Environmental. Grouping mattered more than the guidelines themselves. A designer meets one relevant prompt inside a live project, not a catalogue of twenty.

We renamed the lenses late in the project. One card in the prototype still carries the earlier set, Planetary, Social, Technical, Usefulness and Longevity, so those names survive in a few of the screens and on the poster further down.

Five lenses

Respect people's time and attention. Avoid manipulative or addictive patterns.

Pick up a card to read it.

All twenty guideline cards from the prototype, four under each lens, exported from the Figma file.

  • Energy badge
  • Longevity badge
  • Silver Award badge
  • Purposeful badge

Badges sit beside the guidelines and are awarded on strengths rather than on a score. Four of them, from the prototype’s badge set.

Prove · awards, entries and the proof trail

A GreenPixel entry page, showing the submitted work beside the jury reasoning and the community critique attached to it
The GreenPixel home page: the proposition, how the platform defines sustainable digital design, the awards and the curated gallery
The GreenPixel Awards page, setting out the edition, the categories, how judging works and what an entry has to show
The GreenPixel Curated Gallery, showing submitted work with its recognition badges and community responses
The GreenPixel Guidelines page, listing the guidelines under the Intentional lens with their cards
Five pages of the prototype, each scrolling on its own clock: the home page, the guidelines, the awards, the curated gallery, and an entry with its jury reasoning and community critique. Exported from the Figma file; nothing here is generated.

Improve without prove is a library. Prove without improve is a contest.

05 · Testing

Three designers who had judged awards told us what the platform had to prove first.

We tested in two settings. At our programme's feedback feast we built a booth and walked more than forty visitors through the concept while they thought aloud: fellow students, teachers and other people working in design. Separately I sat down with three designers who had entered design awards or sat on their juries, the closest thing we had to real users of the proposition.

They understood the idea of an award quickly. What they could not do at first was work out whether it was for them.

Three questions came up before anyone mentioned visual design: what counts as a valid entry, who is judging, and what happens to the work after it is submitted.

Until those were answered, enthusiasm did not convert into intent. Once they were, the conversation changed from whether the platform made sense to what they would enter.

The booth. Visitors drove the prototype themselves while we watched.
A think-aloud session on the prototype.
The GreenPixel project poster: the brand mark, a browser view of the platform, sections answering what GreenPixel is, why it exists and who it is for, four cards for Awards, Curated Examples, Guidelines and Community, and a closing line reading Let's define the future of digital together
The poster I produced for the feedback feast, with the walkthrough film playing in it the way it ran on the screen beside it. The film sets up the proposition before anyone is asked to react to it.

  1. Finding 01

    The main call to action felt passive.

    The page invited browsing where the proposition required a decision.

    Lead with action-led entry points instead of an invitation to explore.

  2. Finding 02

    “Why it won” was buried.

    A badge with no visible reasoning told nobody what good looked like.

    Surface the evidence and the expert reasoning on the entry itself.

  3. Finding 03

    Awards and badges competed for attention.

    Two signals of equal weight, and no way to tell which one mattered.

    Make the award primary and treat badges as supporting detail.

  4. Finding 04

    They wanted to see previous winners and names they recognised.

    Trust came from an external legitimacy trail, not from the platform describing itself.

    Show jury, partners, prize and winner evidence before asking for a submission.

I turned the session notes into that change list. Almost every change removed words and added evidence. Three more followed from the same sessions.

The five lenses are defined before anyone is asked to submit

Entry categories state what is being judged, and against what

Proof requirements are explicit at the point of entry

Testing did not tell us the prototype was good. It told us what the product had to prove.

06 · Contribution and reflection

What I did, and what I would test first next time.

I led the desk research and the survey synthesis, and framed what the findings meant for the product: where the barriers actually sat, what proof designers would need, and what each stakeholder had to get out of the platform for it to hold together.

I proposed the pivot from a guideline hub to a recognition model and argued it through with the team. I made and led the card-sorting workshop, and Sai and I turned its output into the five lenses. I worked on the prototype, and I turned the test sessions into a specific change list rather than a list of observations.

I did not own the visual identity or design most of the screens. That was the team's work, and the interface reflects their decisions as much as the strategy reflects mine.

My business background is most useful in the part of this project that is not visual: listening for the problem behind a stated request, structuring conflicting inputs, and making the value of a direction legible to people who care about different things.

I also produced the explanatory video and the poster for the feedback feast, both shown in the testing chapter above. They had the same job: set the proposition up well enough that a visitor walking past the booth could react to the idea rather than to a half-understood version of it.

That mattered more than it sounds. Visitors gave us about a minute of attention before deciding whether to engage, so anything the poster failed to answer became a question we had to answer out loud, over and over, instead of watching them use the thing.

Where I was slow

My own first concepts were a tool, and a narrow one. I went to a solution before I had explored enough of them. Iterating on ideas instead of committing to the first workable one is the habit I did not have at the start of this project, and watching the pivot arrive out of a brainstorm is what showed me what that habit is worth.

I would test the ecosystem earlier, not only the interface.

We validated that the proposition was understandable and that the interface communicated it. We did not validate that the ecosystem behind it would function, and that is the more consequential risk.

The questions I would put first next time

    Would agencies actually submit real client work, with the reasoning attached?

    Could a jury assess proof consistently enough for the result to mean anything?

    What makes a partner willing to attach its name to the outcome?

    How much submission effort is realistic inside a paid project?

    How do criteria reward genuine progress without rewarding good reporting?

How I would run the team differently

We agreed on direction faster than we agreed on ownership, and some work was carried twice before that became visible.

Ownership at kickoff

Name who owns each workstream before the first sprint, not once the work collides

One decision driver

A single driver per major workstream, with the rest of the team consulted rather than co-deciding

Earlier critique

Put unfinished work in front of the team sooner, while changing direction is still cheap

What happened after

After the seven weeks the concept was tested again with an industry expert and fellow students, three people in total. Sai has since taken it on to develop further.

Who made what

Duco Boomsma

Research and survey synthesis, stakeholder and business-model framing, the proposal to pivot to recognition, the card-sorting workshop, prototype contributions, the post-test change list, and the video and poster

With Palida “Sai” Pongmekin

The five lenses, developed together from the card-sorting output. Sai has since taken the concept on

Mariana Bozano, Palida Pongmekin, Oluwatosin Kazeem

The visual identity, the award object and most of the screen design

Faraday Digital Agency

Guidance. Their steer: treat this as a business case, not a nice-to-have, and make it smaller before making it bigger

Scope and attribution

GreenPixel is a tested concept from a Master Digital Design Playground project, not a launched product. No submissions, adoption, commercial result or sustainability impact has been measured, and none is claimed here.

Entries, profiles, organisation names, partner logos and awarded work shown in the prototype are illustrative placeholder content created for testing. They do not represent real partnerships, submissions or jury decisions.

A Master Digital Design Playground project, with guidance from Faraday Digital Agency. Who did what is set out under Who made what, above.

Curious about the thinking behind this? Read the bio or get in touch.