Problem: The process of choosing a senior living community can be complicated, and no two journeys are the same. There are multiple audiences including individuals, couples, and families, as well as the Brookdale community sales and support staff. Planning may take place through considered long-term planning, or through time-critical circumstances, and everything in between. Brookdale Senior Living sought to provide online tools to support the decision making process, as well as the move-in process in order to increase sales success after initial touch points, as well as alleviate strain and complication for the families.
Solution: Following a design research engagement with IDEO, Brookdale hired StellarX (my client) to design and prototype a customer support tool based upon IDEO’s initial findings, and incorporate additional requirements. I helped document requirements, translated them into high level concepts, then produced a sales engagement process flow, and a wireframe prototypes. StellarX then developed a visually rich interactive prototype. I designed and executed usability testing in Tampa, FL and Alpharetta, GA, then performed analysis and made recommendations on both the Web and Mobile interfaces.
Results: As a result, refined requirements, and detailed design specifications were handed off to Brookdale Senior Living for further development.
Task Analysis, Requirements Analysis
I performed task analysis to document the existing, as well as define the new and improved customer journey for sales encounters between families, on-site sales support, and the new decision support tool.
The sales process for a senior living community can be triggered by multiple possible starting points, including a) family or individual calling a central number for information, b) family or individual contacting or visiting one or more senior living communities, or c) friends or family referring potential buyers. From that point forward, Brookdale sales support staff create CRM record to manage the lead.
Migrating to a new centrally located, sharable set of tools for potential customers meant that sales staff also needed to participate in the planning process, and get on board with the new sales support process. The new task flow was used by the internal Brookdale team for defining and socializing the new process, and by the design and development teams to clarify features and functions.
High Level Concepts, Prototypes
As UX Designer and Researcher, I designed multiple high level concepts, then two candidate prototypes to be tested.
Functionality was organized into three main sections:
1) Comparing potential communities, narrowing the field of choices over time
2) Making the purchase (signing a contract and making a deposit)
3) Organizing and scheduling the move-in
We determined some key design principles to guide us including:
Simple, clear navigation and process design.
The decision making process usually takes place over a period of time during which buyers visit a variety of properties and compare amenities and personal impressions. It is very easy for details about each property to become confused, so we included prompts for note taking, and assessing each property visited. Because the decision making process was potentially stressful for buyers, may include multiple decision-makers, and the advanced age of our audience, we strove to keep all navigation and features as straightforward as possible, and relied upon progressive levels of detail in order to keep each screen state simple and easy to navigate.Highly visual interface using visual metaphors like timelines and checklists.
We used real-world metaphors that our audience would be very familiar with such as timelines and checklists in order to keep the process moving smoothly as people work their way through a fairly complex process of transition from living independently to living in a supported community.Usability Testing / Design Validation
We conducted in-depth interviews as well as usability testing on detailed prototypes, gathering additional insights on the decision making process, as well as detailed feedback on efficacy of the proposed features. Overall feedback was positive with participants expressing support for planning tools, but even more so for a sharable document repository for contracts, deposits, and move-in planning. Brookdale gained insight into the customer’s experience of and frustrations with the contract and move-in process.
Document examples available upon request.