Redesigning later living to empower age-friendly experiences for seniors
Guild Living UK aimed to transform the way people think about what we commonly call, the Third Age. They wanted to empower seniors and create a home away from home, that provides a sense of belonging, security and purpose.
Client:
Industry:
Healthcare & Living
Later Living & Care
How might we redefine later living to create communities in the heart of towns and cities where people can live better?
Envisioning a service experience for the third age, bringing to life the new generation of age friendly communities.
Helping the third generation experience later living in a way which is familiar, yet empowering for their life in a newly imagined retirement village.
Opportunity 💡
Our team of 5, developed a series of customer personas showcasing the lives of 5 different seniors who would be the ideal users of Guild Living. These paved the path for the 5 experience journeys we created.
To ensure there was alignment across the board, we defined 5 key Guild principles and the Guild moments. Finally, along with these, a delivery and operational focused service blueprint was created to guide the staff's service delivery.
Process
Qualitative research
Co-creation workshops
Service Journey and Blueprint Mapping
Strategic Design
Client Management
Product and Service Branding
5 User experience journeys
5 Customer Personas
Outcomes 📤
5 Key Brand Principles
Service Blueprints
Staff Engagement Principles
Skills involved 📩
Developing the Guild Living Experience
Through desk research and interviews with seniors entering their later life, we created customer personas. These communicated the behaviours, needs, challenges, habits and tech savviness of the seniors.
We also understood their relationship with technology to establish its incorporation, if at all, in this new space.
Customer Personas
3 types of Personas
Paul, who has just entered retirement and is self-motivated towards a purposeful later life
Self-motivated (Independent)
Mark, who is struggling with accepting life at this stage and needs more care, guidance and support
Lost (Dependent)
Kinship driven (Interdependent)
Judith, who seeks companionship with her loved ones and envision a shared later life
Identifying the various touchpoints to fulfil the experience of Guild Living was key.
5 Customer Experience Journeys
The phases incorporated were the Awareness, Engagement, Purchase, Move in and End of Life. There were numerous iterations involved, as the clients and our team aimed to ensure the journey was as close to reality as possible.
✨Learning point: It was extremely useful that the clients were forthcoming and open to working as a team on a platform that was new to them.
A brand new vision required milestone setting, and a breakdown of concrete steps that would allow for the service experience to come to fruition
Service blueprinting
We worked with several stakeholders, including the Corporate client teams, the Operations teams as well as the F&B teams to identify their involvement at the different points of the blueprint.
We wanted to enable a holistic and third age way of continued living.
Today, Guild Living is in the making, with 7,000 retirement homes over the next five years through its partnership with Legal & General, with an end value of £ 2billion.
The Guild Living team is working with the various departments and leaders to articulate their vision of a seamless service experience for the third age.
They have established some homes in Italy and are developing communities in the UK.
Development plans of Guild Living:
Homes per community: Each community is designed to be a mix of different apartment types and care suites, with a typical site having around 200 flats.
Individual care suites: Within larger communities, individual care suites are available for those who need 24-hour care.
Our efforts helped bring a liveable and friendly home to life
👍🏼 Integration of hospitality, care and age-friendly design
👍🏼 Co-created an aspirational and tangible blueprint
👍🏼 Defined customer facing voice and marketing direction
👍🏼 Created alignment across the business, strategy, customer and staff experience
“Guild Living is actively shaping the future of vibrant retirement communities, through their design philosophy, impact, and community stories on their Instagram →
