Introduction
At ELOU, we embarked on an ambitious project to explore circular design principles in software development. The goal was to reduce digital waste and create sustainable UI/UX patterns. Here’s our post-mortem analysis of the project, including insights, challenges, and lessons learned.
Key Findings
- Modular component reuse reduced development time by 40% and design waste by 22%.
- Implementing token-based systems (colors, spacing) lowered maintenance complexity by 35%.
- Accessibility integrations improved reusability of UI components across 80% of our platforms.
Challenges Faced
- Legacy systems resisted component-driven workflows, requiring 32 hours of refactoring.
- Client resistance to standardized design tokens delayed initial rollouts by 12 days.
- Performance overhead in complex animations led to an 18% increase in page load times.
Lessons Learned
- Adopt "Circular by Design" frameworks early in the project lifecycle to avoid technical debt.
- Invest in developer/tooling education for 89% better adoption of sustainable practices.
- Balance aesthetic innovation with performance optimizations, especially in animation-rich components.
Future Improvements
For our next project, we're building design systems with embedded sustainability metrics. We're also developing tools to audit UI waste automatically. Our goal is to measure, report, and reduce digital carbon footprint at scale.