What problem did you identify?The litter in Leeds city centre due to people being lazy.
What evidence did you find to support your directions?
Initially we looked at eye sores in Leeds, concentrating on the city centre. Research in this area found many different types of eye sores in leeds:
- Graffiti
- Broken debris
- Litter - cigarettes, bottles, take away boxes.
- Permanent litter - chewing gum.
From this we found that litter, (mainly cigarettes, bottles and take away boxes) were the biggest/most noticeable eye sore. We got photographic evidence of this and compared litter at different times. Going out at 4pm and 12midnight we found considerably more litter later on when people were starting to come out for a night out.
We also wanted to see if litter was the true problem or if it was the lack of bins, so we selected a route from the leeds college of art down through town finishing at briggate. This route focused on main high streets, which would be busy and therefore create more litter, and less busy streets which theoretically would have less litter. Our findings are below:
We found that the problem of litter is caused by people and not by the amount of bins. Placing the two maps side by side you can see that were the litter occurs there is still a vast amount of bins, so people aren't littering because there are no bins.
We found 97 bins covering 8 streets.
Maybe they are littering because they are lazy? Or maybe they are littering because they don't know where the bins are?...
To help inform our findings on the streets of the centre of Leeds we comprised a questionnaire, our findings were:
53% of people thought people litter because of LAZINESS followed by...
14% thinking it was because of the BIN STRIKE, which has finished now, making it an invalid point.
Other answers were: people are just not bothered, habit, full bins, upbringing, not enough bins.
Our findings suggested that people are unaware of bins and their locations, and therefore don't use them.
97% of people thought litter was a problem in Leeds city centre.
We asked what would make people more likely to use a bin and they answered:
More of an incentive to use bins, more colourful and visual bins, more interactive, cleaner bins, more bins, guilt of dropping litter, bigger fines.
Now we knew we had to draw peoples attention to the bins more and make them more convenient. In this busy society peoples attention needs to be grabbed away from their own hustle and bustle of everyday life to make a difference.
Secondary research included,...
On the Leeds council website information of bin emptying times stating that bins are emptied on accordance to how busy the area is ranging from being emptied daily to two or three times a week. Street cleaning is also done regularly and if a large spillage or litter concentrated in one area occurs street cleaners will come and clear up the mess. Also walking up to bins there is a sign saying that there is a £75 fine if you drop litter, this seemed to be a good idea and incentive to potential litterers however, there was litter all over the floor next to bins, so maybe the visibility and incentive to put your litter in a bin needs to addressed.
What methods did you use to gather your evidence and what forms did it take? (categorise your research using the terms primary, secondary, quantitative and qualitative).
Primary - Qualitative Research - Visually looking who drops litter and when, distance between bins in accordance to where they are, photographing evidence.
Primary - Quantitative Research - Bin to litter ratio count, amount of bins in certain area, questionnaire.
Secondary - Qualitative Research - Internet city centre bins information.
Secondary - Quantitative Research - Fines, existing littering problems.
What methods of research did you find useful and why?
Going out and seeing the problem in its primary state was most helpful because I could see the litter building up and then the bin men coming to clear it. Seeing the problem up close helped to determine how to solve it and what would work effectively.
How did these inform your response to your problem?
Putting yourself if the audiences situation and best trying to interpret how they would react to our solution helped us further our ideas.
What methods did you encounter as problematic?
Trying to catch people in the act littering found itself to be very hard, also there was little internet information on the direct problem available.
How did you overcome this?
We looked at different aspects of the problem which would help overcome the obstacles such as, looking how litter built up over time rather than catching people dropping it themselves. The lack of internet information wasn't such of a problem because the most important information was available.
What research could you have carried out that would have proved more useful?
Looking at the amount of litter over a longer period of time could have improved our results validity. Also asking more people in the questionnaire for their comments on what would stop them from littering, because after all it is them who we are trying to please, so having a better idea on what they would like to see would better inform our solution.
5 things I have learnt about design process over the last two weeks:
Design process can quickly change direction when in-depth research is carried out.
Working in groups means a lot of communication is vital.
All ideas need to be looked at when working in a group to please everyone.
Thinking about what you are going to do will never get the job finished.
Keeping focused on the target audience and environment for the solution is vital.
5 things I would do differently next time:
Keep more communicated with all group members.
Assign specific jobs to certain people so 2 people don't to the same thing.
Have a team member from the start to engage some authority.
Encourage team members to engage more with the group for a better result.
Structure work better, plan ahead, timetable what needs to be done.
