Designing for
Sustainable Outcome

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This recap includes the following episodes and guests.
Guest title reflects the guest's position at the time of the episode.

Recipes:

Incorporate Sustainability in Product Design
Develop Internal Pitch Frameworks
Acting on What You Measure
Pull Up a Chair: SREs in the Design Room
Design is Done When There’s Nothing Left to Take Away
Culture

Erin Buonomo | Product Design Executive @ IBM Software

Chris Hammond | Head of Product Design | Delivering Innovation

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Danny Fontaine | Strategic Sales, IBM, author of 'PITCH', host of Pitch Masters Podcast

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(video version) (audio only)

Origin of the Elevator Pitch

Hear Danny share the origin of the elevator pitch on the importance of story telling to persuade others of your idea.

Designing for Sustainable Outcomes

A Recipe for Embedding Sustainability in Design and Pitching

🥬 Incorporate Sustainability in Product Design

🎯 Goal: Bake sustainability into the product from day one—across usability, cost, and long-term impact.

Erin Buonomo and Chris Hammond joined me to explore how design can be a powerful lever for sustainability. Erin reminded us that “80% of a product’s environmental impact is influenced by decisions made at the design stage.” That’s a staggering number—and a call to action for all of us to get involved earlier.

Chris reframed design as more than just aesthetics: “Design is done not when there's anything left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away.” That minimalist mindset is about reducing waste, energy, and complexity. Erin added, “We need to ensure we’re consciously spending enough time considering this dimension [sustainability] and making intentional decisions.”

🛠️ In Practice:

Invite SREs and architects into early design reviews.
Add sustainability as a fourth lens alongside desirability, feasibility, and viability.
Use data on resource utilization to inform design decisions.

🧠 Develop Internal Pitch Frameworks

🎯 Goal: Help engineers and teams frame sustainability arguments that resonate with stakeholders.

Danny Fontaine, the Pitch Master, brought a fresh perspective on how we communicate sustainability—not just what we say, but how we say it. He shared that “pitching is the art and science of persuasion… it’s about connecting through emotions, not just facts.”

He walked us through a pitch framework that mirrors a good story: disturb, inspire, challenge, and deliver. “Instead of the world we’re in now, imagine this world,” he said, describing how to paint a compelling vision of the future. But he also warned us not to sugarcoat it: “This is not an easy journey. To achieve this new vision, you have many challenges and obstacles to overcome.”

🛠️ In Practice:

Start your pitch with a story, not a slide.
Use emotional contrast: show the pain of today and the promise of tomorrow.
Save the architecture diagrams for later—lead with the “why.”

🪑 Make Room for Diverse Voices

🎯 Goal: Build better solutions by including diverse perspectives early and often.

One of the most powerful themes from Erin and Chris was the importance of diversity—not just in demographics, but in roles and thinking. Erin emphasized, “Diversity of thought and perspectives is critical to our day-to-day solutioning.” She challenged us to ask: “How do we have more visible SRE contributors early on in the process?”

Chris added, “Are we relentless in making that solution both efficient for the users as well as the system that delivers it?” That kind of thinking only happens when we bring different disciplines together—design, SRE, product, and beyond.

🛠️ In Practice:

Invite SREs to design and technical reviews—not just postmortems.
Encourage curiosity and “hard questions” from all roles.
Host cross-functional lunch & learns to build empathy and shared language.

🎭 Create Memorable Experiences

🎯 Goal: Use storytelling and immersion to shift mindsets and win over skeptics.

Danny shared one of the most creative pitches I’ve ever heard—an immersive role-play where clients were temporarily “hired” by a fictional competitor. “We changed their paradigms by immersing them in this experience,” he said. It wasn’t about slides—it was about making them feel the urgency and opportunity.

He also reminded us that “people don’t remember what you said—they remember how you made them feel.”That’s a powerful insight for anyone trying to drive change.

🛠️ In Practice:

Use role-play or scenario-based workshops to explore sustainability trade-offs.
Start your presentation with an anomaly—something unexpected to grab attention.
Tailor your message to the emotional drivers of your audience.

🧹 Design is Done When There’s Nothing Left to Take Away

🎯 Goal: Simplify experiences to reduce waste, improve usability, and support sustainability.

Erin Bunomo echoed this with a practical lens:

“We need to make sure we’re consciously spending enough time considering this dimension [sustainability] and making intentional decisions.”
She emphasized that design choices—from how long something lasts to whether it can be repaired—are made early and have lasting impact.

🛠️ In Practice:

Audit your product or system for unnecessary complexity—what can be removed?
Consider the energy and resource cost of each feature or interaction.
Use design reviews to ask: “Is this the simplest way to deliver value?”

Chris brought this timeless design principle to life with a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

“Design is done not when there's anything left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away.”

This isn’t just about clean interfaces—it’s about intentionality. Chris challenged us to ask: Are we just adding things, or are we being deliberate about what we remove? He connected this to sustainability, reminding us that simpler experiences often require less energy, are more accessible, and easier to maintain.

Erin echoed this with a practical lens:

🛠️ In Practice:

Audit your product or system for unnecessary complexity—what can be removed?
Consider the energy and resource cost of each feature or interaction.
Use design reviews to ask: “Is this the simplest way to deliver value?”

🌱 Secret Ingredient: Culture

🎯 Goal: Build a culture where sustainability is second nature.

Both episodes circled back to culture. Chris said it best: “Do we have a sustainable culture of sustainability? ”Erin added that “culture change doesn’t happen overnight… it’s a result of leadership and day-to-day changes in a certain direction.”

This is about more than frameworks or metrics—it’s about how we work, who we include, and what we value. The goal? A future where sustainability is just how we do business.

🛠️ In Practice:

Embed sustainability into onboarding and training—just like accessibility and design thinking.
Set stretch goals (BHAGs - Big Hairy Audacious Goal) that inspire action.
Celebrate small wins and share stories to build momentum.

💬 Let’s Talk: Questions to Spark Conversation

What’s one sustainability metric you wish your team tracked—but doesn’t yet?
How might we design meetings or rituals that naturally include SREs, designers, and product leaders?
What’s a story you could tell to help someone feel the impact of a sustainability decision?

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