Imagine Less. Experience More.

Assemble’s purchase pathway had been designed around the challenge of saving enough money to buy a home. We discovered the challenges that people are experiencing in the housing market went well beyond this. People were struggling with rapid rises in rental agreements, a sense that the goalpost of home ownership were always shifting, and anxieties about buying from ‘dodgy’ developers. They described the home buying experience as ‘absurd’.

We ran design research with 45 people including current, former, and prospective residents. We learned about their hopes, pains and experiences through conversation, usability testing, and co-design.

We mapped the end-to-end, 5+ year journey that residents would go on with Assemble, identifying opportunities for improvements at each stage of the experience. Based on our findings, we undertook a significant evolution to the customer strategy—who they serve, what they offer, how they communicate their value, and the channels they use to reach them.

Based on our findings, we undertook a significant evolution to the customer strategy—who they serve, what they offer, how they communicate their value, and the channels they use to reach them.

We used this as a basis to reimagine the prospective customer experience, developing a new marketing campaign and website that helps residents explore Assemble’s apartments and pricing model. We developed a new platform — ‘Imagine less. Experience more’ — that deliberately challenges the absurdity of the housing market.

This platform came to life in the digital experience, where we stayed true to a strategy of transparency—giving people the information they want, where other property developers would hide it or hold it ransom in exchange for personal data.

Our human-centred approach allowed us to evolve the customer experience to a position where it makes the systemic challenges of the housing market more personally relevant to the people finding a home with Assemble.

Every component of the campaign and customer experience was built on customer research, co-creation workshops and customer testing. From the underlying insights and business challenge through to the accessibility of every touchpoint, we designed an experience that was distinctive, accessible and human.

We deliberately challenged the visual and tonal language of inner city property developers—one of luxury and overclaim. Instead, Assemble’s approach is informal, intimate and honest—using custom handwritten type, a distinctive blue to cut through, and bold headlines that poke fun at property sales cliches.

We built a thoughtful calculator, designed to help people do the “back of napkin” maths to figure out whether Assemble was right for them.

Simplicity and an intuitive experience were the cornerstones of the calculator, to encourage users to explore and experiment with the options available and help them imagine themselves on the rent-to-own journey.

This was integrated into Assemble’s property management system to provide accurate, detailed, and importantly, live data on prices and availability to users.

By deeply understanding the challenges people are facing in the property market, we were able to make adjustments to Assemble’s approach to deliver on their vision of a fairer housing system.

In the first four months of being online, the pricing guide has been used 13,000 times by prospective leads. Over 1,300 leads have been brought in the first four months since launch. These leads are highly engaged and more ready to commit.

“The launch of the new campaign and website has already resulted in more high-quality leads coming through to our sales team. People can clearly understand our purchase pathway and offer and are ready to take the next step.” - Sophie Rzepecky, Assemble’s Head of Brand