One roof Two generations /Ett tak tva generationer
A home sharing platform that connects elders with students
Increased access to housing for young people, more stimulating and safer living for the elderly.
This challenge was presented as a Social Innovation for the fast growing sustainable cities. Lack of housing, especially for young people, hampers growth and development of sustainable, attractive cities. Young people´s access to housing is crucial for education and a good start in adult life. The share of elderly in the population is growing. Loneliness and insecurity in everyday life is a growing problem, particularly for elderly single households.
Correctly designed, we could see potential to create a service including several added values. Increased access to housing for young people, more stimulating and safer living for the elderly, creating bridges between the generations, as well as potential for valuable mutual exchanges, increased sustainability and better use of resources. We started working with this project at 2015 and we still keep it running while always improving it.
The challenge here was to develop a platform that fits the needs of both elders and students.
After a long empathy phase with our target groups we identified a list of insights that helped us during the whole design process. We did a series of workshops with both students and elders and used a series of design thinking methods. Having this list of insights we brainstormed and produced ideas of how to deal with the problem. After some iterations of empathizing, ideating, prototyping and testing we came up with our final concept.
To be able to be close to our target groups we collaborate with both senior organizations and student groups. So far, students and seniors have worked together to explore opportunities and potential obstacles for this service to function based on their unique needs. The service has been running for some time now but we are still improving it according to the feedback we get from the users that have already used our service.
Our unique element is that we provide support during the whole process even when the contract ends.
We match elders with students based on their needs, interests and individual wishes.
After the match, we support both sides with the first contact and help with the lease agreement. Rents payments are handled through our service and we provide both landlords and residents support during the whole co-living experience via mail and telephone.