Like other communities, sustainability in and for software design is a grand research and development challenge. Current research focuses on eliciting the meanings of sustainability and on building approaches for its engineering and integration into the mainstream software development lifecycle. However, few concrete guidelines that software designers can apply effectively are available. A guideline aims to streamline the design processes according to a set of well-known research routines or sound industry practices. Such guidelines can help software developers in the elicitation of sustainability requirements and testing software against these requirements. This paper introduces a sustainability design catalogue (SSDC) comprising a series of guidelines. It aims to assist software developers and managers in eliciting sustainability requirements, and then in measuring and testing software sustainability. The catalogue is based on reviews of the current and past research on sustainability in software engineering, which are the grounds for the development of the catalogue. Four different case studies were analyzed using the Karlskrona manifesto principles on sustainability design. A pilot framework is also proposed that includes a set of sustainability goals, concepts and methods. It exemplifies how to apply and quantify sustainability.

The world faces escalating crises: record-breaking temperatures, widespread fires, severe flooding, increased oceanic microplastics, and unequal resource distribution. Academia introduces courses around sustainability to meet the new demand, but software engineering education lags behind. While software systems contribute to environmental issues through high energy consumption, they also hold the potential for solutions, such as more efficient and equitable resource management. Yet, sustainability remains a low priority for many businesses, including those in the digital sector. Business as usual is no longer viable. A transformational change in software engineering education is urgently needed. We must move beyond traditional curriculum models and fully integrate sustainability into every aspect of software development. By embedding sustainability as a core competency, we can equip future engineers not only to minimise harm but also to innovate solutions that drive positive, sustainable change. Only with such a shift can software engineering education meet the demands of a world in crisis and prepare students to lead the next generation of sustainable technology. This article discusses a set of challenges and proposes a customisable education roadmap for integrating sustainability into the software engineering curricula. These challenges reflect our perspective on key considerations, stemming from regular, intensive discussions in regular workshops among the authors and the community, as well as our extensive research and teaching experience in the field.

To foster a sustainable society within a sustainable environment, we must dramatically reshape our work and consumption activities, most of which are facilitated through software. Yet, most software engineers hardly consider the effects on the sustainability of the IT products and services they deliver. This issue is exacerbated by a lack of methods and tools for this purpose. Despite the practical need for methods and tools that explicitly support consideration of the effects that IT products and services have on the sustainability of their intended environments, such methods and tools remain largely unavailable. Thus, urgent research is needed to understand how to design such tools for the IT community properly. In this article, we describe our experience using design science to create the Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF), which supports software engineers in anticipating and mitigating the potential sustainability effects during system development. More specifically, we identify and present the challenges faced during this process. The challenges that we have faced and addressed in the development of the SusAF are likely to be relevant to others who aim to create methods and tools to integrate sustainability analysis into their IT products and services development. Thus, the lessons learned in SusAF development are shared for the benefit of researchers and other professionals who design tools for that end.

This article assesses the quality of low-code/no-code development platforms through the lens of ISO 25010:2023. While these platforms enable usability and reduce development speed, there are challenges in complexity and customizable business needs limiting their effectiveness for high-performance and high-risk environments.

The concept of climate justice extends traditional environmentalism by emphasizing the social dimensions of environmental issues. Recently, it has gained much attention due to the growing impacts of climate change, especially on vulnerable communities that contribute minimally to global emissions. Based on the need for research in this field, this paper reports on a study that examined how higher education institutions (HEIs) are integrating climate justice into education, based on a literature review and a set of case studies. These cases highlight actions undertaken by various HEIs to incorporate climate justice into education across the globe. Based on the increasing number of publications, the findings show a growing research interest in the topic and reveal that some countries such as the US, the UK, China, Australia, and Germany have a visible presence in the literature. It also provides a wide range of perspectives on educational practices in climate justice, including real-world examples of courses implemented in HEIs. The findings reveal that HEIs have significant potential to address climate justice in their educational programs, which may help to transform students’ values and actions despite challenges.