“Good Design is Environmentally-Friendly.” – Discussion of Rams‘ Principle in Context of the Software Life Cycle

Abstract

Dieter Rams publicized a statement that good design of products is environmentally friendly. This paper discusses software, as an intangible product, with environment and terms related to environment. To measure software in context of environment we discuss two accepted methods and show the shortage of these methods in connection with software. We also mention the analogy between software life cycle and general product life cycle. By considering all the aspects, we reasoned that ecological design of software is inherently covered by non-functional requirements which take up product characteristics concerning the whole software life cycle. Finally we discuss if Rams’ statement related to nowadays understanding of environment and propose a revised statement.