Key results
Desk-based research
- Nic Walker's research confirmed that our productions have a very low carbon footprint.
- We also identified major tradeoffs in self-hosting: Zoyander's research surfaced significant creative potential in Peertube, but Nic's research found that due to economies of scale, it is much more carbon intensive than Youtube
- There is no clear aesthetic that signals sustainable web design - even an image-rich site can have a very low footprint. Sustainable design is less about aesthetic, and more about the management of computing resources and time.
Artist commissions
- Our major refactor significantly improved usability for artists, with all artists agreeing that the software is accessible and affordable.
- As it often the case in software design, simplifying the experience meant abstracting more parts of the system. This introduced new challenges, such as when troubleshooting issues with the live database which is no longer directly accessible to artists
- Some artists requested more structured tutorials; we were able to respond to this request quickly and schedule in extra activities
- A major remaining friction point is the need to run a local development server to test the works in progress. PJ Henning has begun work on a new development environment that will remove this pain point.