Service Designers Connect

What if ‘Fly-tipping’ is a Service Design problem?

Thu, Sep 24 · 6:00 PM BST

Nottingham Trent University, Newton Building, Level 2, Hooley Room, 10 Goldsmith St, Nottingham NG1 4BU, Nottingham, GB

What if fly-tipping is a Service Design problem?

In 2024/25, local authorities in England dealt with 1.26 million incidents of fly-tipping, an increase of 9% on the previous year.*

For councils, tackling fly-tipping is a stubborn and complex challenge.
It isn't simply about catching people or persuading them to behave better.

Councils are trying to understand why people dump waste illegally in the first place, while balancing limited resources, increasing waste amounts, changing behaviours and the user needs of an entire city!

The usual responses are familiar: more bins, bigger fines, more signs and cameras.

But what if we looked at the problem differently?

What if, at certain moments, the services around people make doing the right thing confusing, difficult, expensive or inconvenient?

And what if service design could help us re-imagine those moments?

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We're taking on the challenge!
For this Service Designers Connect meet-up, we're teaming up with James Denham, Jim Lowe and Claire Knight from Nottingham City Council to tackle fly-tipping head-on.

This isn't a hypothetical design challenge.

It's a real problem affecting the city we live in, and we're going to put our service design skills to work on it.

We'll go beyond mapping service touchpoints to understand the people, places, behaviours and circumstances that shape what happens.

We'll ask:

• What happens when someone needs to get rid of something?
• What choices do they have?
• What makes the right thing easy – or difficult?
• Where are the frustrations, barriers and moments of opportunity?
• And what might cause someone to choose illegal dumping instead?

Using personas, place-based experiences, journey mapping and behavioural insight, we'll explore the problem from different perspectives before turning what we discover into practical interventions the council could test and learn from.

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Why this matters

Service Designers Connect is committed to giving something back to the local community through Service Design.

So rather than simply 'talking' about service design, we're going to 'do' it, to tackle a real challenge facing Nottingham.

The aim isn't to solve fly-tipping in one evening. It's to give Nottingham City Council new perspectives, fresh ideas and practical interventions they can take away, explore and potentially test.

And who knows? Something created in the room might just make a difference on the streets of Nottingham.

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Who should come along?

You might be a student, academic, designer, researcher, strategist, council employee or simply someone who cares about making the city a better place.

All you need is curiosity, an open mind and a willingness to work with others on a genuinely difficult problem.

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No Service Design or fly-tipping expertise required!

Just come ready to challenge assumptions, explore a problem from a human perspective and be prepared to get your hands dirty!

As always, there'll be drinks, sandwhiches and plenty of time to connect with other curious and like-minded people.

🎫 Places are free but limited, book yours and help us tackle the challenge of fly-tipping.

* DEFRA Fly-tipping statistics for England, 2024 to 2025

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Other interesting links!
How do you stop fly-tipping and littering?
The National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group
The Waste Tip (University of Manchester)
Research report examining the root causes of fly tipping, including inequalities, infrastructure, and prevention-focused approaches rather than enforcement alone.

Bringing back creative research methods

Thu, Nov 19 · 6:30 PM GMT

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Online

Online

What’s this session about?
Over the past decade, a quiet shift has happened. As research moved online, creativity got left behind.

Semi-structured interviews became the default, and with them, we lost the richness and diversity of methods that help us uncover what people really think, feel, and do.

Becky Mallaband and Rebecca Partridge are on a mission to change that.

In this session, they'll share how a more creative approach to research (both in person and online) can help you go deeper, surface tacit knowledge, and get far more valuable insights from every session you run.

After attending this session, you'll leave with:

1. A clearer understanding of the different levels of knowledge and why they matter
2. See methods in action that you can try straight away
3. Fresh thinking about your own practice and where creativity could take it further

Who's this for?
Anyone who conducts research or is interested in Human-centred Design, whether you're just starting out or looking to shake up your existing practice.

Anything else?
This will be a fun online session and a safe space to have a go and ask questions, just bring drinks and nibbles!

About our speakers
Becky Mallaband is an expert is in User Centred Design (UCD) and she is currently the Head of Design School at NEC Digital Studio (formerly Snook), which seeks to build UCD capability and confidence in individuals, teams and organisations.

Becky also has a PhD in UCD, and 10 years’ experience working in academia, where she taught and conducted research in UCD, before moving into the Civil Service, leading a research team. Becky is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and holds a postgraduate diploma in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education.
Rebecca Partridge is a Senior User Researcher NEC Digital Studio (formerly Snook). Her expertise is in creative participatory design research. She has a PhD in research through design in healthcare and over 12 years of experience in the field of user centred design. She is passionate about diversifying the methods that we use for research and design, and the value that participatory methods bring to qualitative research enquiries.