Brief Overview
La Vie is a capstone lifestyle research project conducted at Thrive Senior Living during my 6 month internship. A company that owns senior living properties across the US. This project focuses on understanding the residents better by conducting primary and secondary research in 4 of the communities. This research helps in upgrading the brand image and archetype, the search experience for older adults along with key insights and recommendations for the website design.
Timeline
June 2019 - December 2019
Services
Ethnographic Research, Contextual Inquiry, Voice-of-Customer Research, Data Analysis, and Brand Strategy Strategy
Umbrella Question
How might we use design management methods to understand the lifestyle of older adults to enhance the experience?
Communities
Thrive owns and operates 16 communities across the US. My research was focused on 4 of these communities that had trouble generating leads compared to the others.
Design Process
The process includes the 5 key steps to gain in-depth knowledge about the problem using quantitative and qualitative techniques, analysis and synthesis of gathered data and ideating solutions. Prototyping, User Testing and implementing is out of scope.
Secondary Research
This research started with demographics research of each region to understand the the target population for generalization. I focused on age, sex, social security income and housing scenario which provides data about their lifestyle as well.
Primary Research
Observation - I had the opportunity to spend time in these communities and observe the lifestyle of some of the residents.
Survey - Quantitative surveys were conducted with the families of the residents to capture insights on their experience of finding a good senior living community and their experience with the current website.
Interview - I conducted 16 in-depth interviews with the residents. These interviews focused on learning more about their behaviors, feelings, perception and experiences about life at the community, their transition and pain points to enhance their current experience and help make it seamless for upcoming residents as well.
Card Sorting - To make the interview process fun and engaging, I included card sorting to learn how they saw themselves and how they would like to be represented.
Key Insights -
“It took me hours to find the necessary information on the website.”
“I had trouble distinguishing which option was best for my parent.”
“The process was more difficult than I expected.”
Analysis & Synthesis
After gathering all the data from primary and secondary research, I synthesized the data using empathy maps. It provided me deeper insights of the users. This empathy map was used to create buyer personas. 2 of the 4 personas were called the ideal buyers which helped me in ideating concepts and building a design strategy.
Buyer Personas
Buyer Personas, unlike general personas are well defined. I included demographics behavior patterns, goals and frustrations.
These buyer personas are used to guide the business, and it can help keep the brand centered on the needs of the users. They also help drive sales -
By creating personalized experience.
Show targeted ads as per personas.
Blog content to not be focused on just 1 persona.
Pain points used during sales conversations.
Voice-of-Customer Recommendations
Changing the brand archetype and voice from Caregiver to Hero to differentiate from competitors and change the way Seniors are represented.
Thrive needs to market themselves as a HERO brand, that rescues you or helps you prove your worth through courage and determination. A leader or “rockstar” that you want to be like.
Stop the one-size-fits-all on-boarding for new residents using the buyer personas.
Website Recommendations
Update the current website to an engaging, user-centered website by changing the sitemap to be efficient and quick to reach the call to action.
Update navigational clues, descriptive links, and highly visible site elements.