Past Events

Attendees at our first meetup were treated to a free drink, a slice of pizza and talks from 2 excellent speakers: Innovation consultant - Dr Chloe Sharp shared practical tools for innovating in a recession, while UX Designer - Elsa Bartley talked us through some key lessons learned from her experience. 

Our 2nd meetup explored innovating for sustainability: Horizon User Researcher - Tanvi Vats explained the 'Right to Repair' landscape and designing for reparability, while SPARCK Head of Design - Paul Bailey delved into 'innovating better, with less'. Attendees discussed ideas over free pizza and continued conversations over drinks in the bar afterwards. Watch the highlights

Our 3rd meetup was hosted by UNIP at the Ingenuity Centre. Nightingale CEO - Frances Brown shared how they partnered with The High Street Experts, secured Innovate UK funding and discovered tools to drive revitalisation of UK markets. UoN's Simon Castle Green and Dom Price explained key challenges faced by robotic technologies in the real world.

Our 4th meetup focussed on the practicalities of design and innovation. NEC Digital Studio's Becky Mallaband shared experiences of user centred design from her background in research and public sector. STEAMHouse's Patrick Bek gave insight into overcoming barriers to innovation. These fascinating talks along with great discussions among attendees provided a fantastic finale to our first year!

Our 5th meetup got DiNG's 2025 off to a flying start with 2 inspiring and thought provoking talks. Digital Anthropologist Indrani Lahiri told her child-resilience innovation story from securing funding to developing initiatives. Researcher Fabiana Anselmo prompted discussion around empowering users and building longevity into IoT devices.

The second event of 2025 was a perfect display of community coming together to engage, to learn and connect with like minded people. Product designer Matt Langford, from People Planet Product, shared practical strategies for translating early user insights into actionable design inputs as well as common pitfalls. After a short pizza break, design researcher Princess Woy introduced a four-step ideation process that enables designers to translate psychological wellbeing elements into tangible design features.

Our 7th meetup explored the theme of innovation and challenges in content design. UX and Content Strategist - Lucy Pickering shared a fascinating new approach that can transform digital products and services - treating content as an interconnected web of reusable elements - rather than individual pages or screens. Digital marketing professional - Gary Morgan talked us through key challenges of designing the interfaces and content for touchscreen kiosks compared to standard web design.