# Sustainability Audit of University Websites in Poland:
## 2 Background
### Technical Framework for Sustainable Web Design  
In the digital transformation era, it has become highly relevant for software engineers to consider the environmental impact of websites at the design stage. The empirical part of the study has two complementary pillars: sustainable interaction design (SID) and green software engineering (GSE). They represent the perspective of human-technology interaction and designing environmentally friendly software, respectively.  
Sustainable interaction design involves digital system designers considering the long-term environmental effects of the solutions they use, both at the code level (back-end) and the user interface level (front-end) [20]. It promotes strategies for reducing resource consumption, minimising data transfer, and avoiding excessive media and extensive functionalities. Principles advocated by SID are perfectly aligned with the notion of low emissions, which focuses on curbing the website's carbon footprint in addition to optimising its performance, search engine results page position, and conversion rates. Low-emission means, in this case, minimisation of the website's environmental impact without sacrificing its functionality and usability.  
Green software engineering (GSE) is an engineering approach focused on creating and developing software in a way that minimises its environmental impact. The critical GSE contributor is the Green Software Foundation [19]. It promotes GSE principles and develops relevant standards. Some design principles of GSE include energy efficiency, carbon emissions awareness, effective use of hardware, and data transfer optimisation. These principles directly affect web design, from server selection and front-end architecture to website carbon footprint analysis and optimisation using tools such as Ecograder, Website Carbon Calculator, and Green Web Foundation Checker.  
The Green Web Foundation (GWF) proposes principles similar to those of the GSF, focusing on reducing the environmental impact of websites, primarily by promoting green hosting and disseminating carbon footprint data for digital infrastructure. The ultimate goal of the GWF is to curb CO\({}_{2}\) emissions from Internet use to support the global digital transition towards climate neutrality. The primary premise of the GWF's design rules is energy efficiency. Websites have to be designed to use the minimum amount of energy possible on both the server and user sides [27]. One way to achieve this is to reduce data size through compression and minification of assets, reducing the number of HTTP requests, and techniques such as lazy loading and content caching. The Green Web Foundation promotes the use of green hosting, i.e., servers powered by renewable energy. All these principles serve a single purpose: to reduce digital carbon footprints and make the Internet a more sustainable place.  
Sustainable interaction design and green software engineering are complementary theoretical and practical frameworks for evaluating the current environmental impact of university websites and identifying areas for improvement. In the present work, measurement tools facilitate an empirical assessment of the extent to which Polish educational institutions employ sustainable digital design principles. Hence, the study makes three key contributions to the body of knowledge: (1) operationalisation of GSE and SID on a national scale: the study demonstrates how to measure the effects of applying sustainable web design; (2) sustainability benchmark of public universities: the study identified differences among websites and areas for improvement; and (3) the study verifies how institutional decisions follow or violate the declarative environmental values.