Designing for Sustainability - The Effect of Software Sustainability on Quality-in-Use

In recent years, the surge in society’s use of information and communication technology solutions has increased the importance of software sustainability. Despite increasing attention and publications in this field, challenges persist due to the newness of the domain and the ambiguity surrounding a common definition of sustainability. The complexity of software sustainability extends to its categorization and effects, including first-order impacts from software production and broader consequences on global systems. Sustainability challenges are also noted when users interact with the software, which identifies the gap in user-focused perspectives and models integrating sustainability evaluation. To address this, my thesis aims to achieve four objectives over four years: (1) investigate the incorporation of user perspectives in current software sustainability practices, (2) explore user perceptions regarding software sustainability, (3) co-design a conceptual framework to integrate user perspectives into software sustainability evaluation and (4) empirically validate the framework. The thesis plan involves a mixed-method approach including systematic literature reviews, interviews, questionnaires, empirical evaluations, and participatory design. My preliminary findings reveal research gaps on the user perspective in software sustainability, emphasizing the need for further investigation and the potential impact of this research on software sustainability and user experience. The result of this research has the potential to assist software engineers in considering the user perspective when designing for sustainability in software systems.