Core Principles
(Re)define success first
SUI is focusing on UIs as apps are built around user. It promotes 3 core principles: well-being, equity and sustainability. To redefine UIs, it means to redefine what user can and cannot do within software that we create. In today's economic structure which is capitalism, GDP is a primary metric for measuring success. We think this is not right as activities of consumers and companies have other more significant consequences. This completely changes meaning of a good software.
Read more about ethical design
SUI's vision is inspired by the original article from Lennart Overkamp titled "Designers, (Re)define Success First" on A List Apart magazine from May 2022.
Ethical design implies three core values for SUI:
Well-being
We build UIs that treat user’s attention and time well. We do our best not to give user a reason for being addicted to the app. We provide nudges that encourage healthier behavior from the user perspective. We are well aware of attention economy and do not promote it further.
Equity
We build UIs that offer the same functionality to every human being. Given the fact that not everyone has the most high-end device capable of running multiple jobs at the same time, we provide degraded version of UI that provides the same functionality. Such UI is also less demanding on network bandwidth in addition to processing power required to run the software.
Sustainability
We build UIs that help make more sustainable user choices. SUI is built around Display Mode primitive that we define later on in the docs. Application that has sustainable UI has different modes of operation based on grid carbon intensity situation in a given region or user preference which makes it adaptive.