Attitudes to developing sustainable digital products : A human-centered design study on how to support the climate work of digital media service providers

Abstract: As climate change is becoming an increasingly more alarming threat in society, sustainability as a topic becomes more and more important in relation to a range of business activities, software development being one. Several frameworks for how software development and computing products should be developed and evaluated on the basis of sustainability and climate impact are being developed, but there are no standardized ways to go about this type of work and the topic is still under prioritized in favor of other non functional requirements, like financial aspects. Models for how the climate impact of different parts of the process chain can be estimated are being implemented into the operations of many major companies and goals surrounding reduced emissions are being set. However, these goals are not being translated into the day-to-day operations of developers and other stakeholders developing these digital products. This thesis is centered around a qualitative study that investigates the attitudes of software developers and product owners at the Swedish public service broadcasting company SVT in regards to working with sustainability. The challenges they face in relation to reducing the climate impact of their digital platforms in general, and their streaming platforms in particular, are presented and a stakeholder co-created tool to meet these challenges was prototyped.