Relaunching Thrive, Growthpoint's student living brand

Some briefs you take because the client is serious, and some you take because the problem is genuinely interesting, and every so often one arrives carrying both. We're glad to share that Touchfoundry is partnering with Growthpoint - one of the largest property groups on the continent - to relaunch Thrive, their student living brand, and to rebuild the digital experience underneath it from the studs.

The one-line brief is the kind we like: stop designing for how property companies list buildings, and start designing for how students actually find a place to live. Those two things have surprisingly little in common, which is precisely the opportunity.

The search nobody designed for

Watch a student hunt for accommodation (we have been, it's where every engagement of ours starts) and the journey looks nothing like a property listing site assumes. It happens almost entirely on a phone, often on expensive data. It's seasonal and deadline-driven in ways tied to results, registration and funding cycles rather than to a rental calendar. It's rarely a solo decision - parents and guardians are in the WhatsApp thread, frequently paying, always vetting - and the questions that actually decide the choice (is it safe, who will I live with, how do I get to campus, what does the room really look like on a Tuesday) are the ones a floor plan and a photo gallery answer worst.

The industry's standard digital response has been a brochure with a form on the end, and the result is that the highest-stakes accommodation decision of a young person's life gets made through one of the weakest digital experiences in property. That's the gap Thrive's relaunch is aimed at.

Students aren't searching for property. They're searching for a year of their life.

How we're approaching it

In keeping with how we work, the engagement starts in the first diamond rather than in a feature list - research with students and parents across the journey, the funnel data read honestly, and the moments that matter mapped before anything gets designed. The experience that follows will be built around those journeys end to end, from first search through application to actually living there, and measured against the numbers that make the brand's case rather than against launch-day applause.

What drew us to Growthpoint's version of this brief is that they're treating the digital experience as core to the product rather than as marketing for it - the same conviction that sits under every platform we've enjoyed building. Student housing is a sector where doing the digital properly is still a differentiator rather than table stakes, and Thrive has the portfolio and the intent to set that bar.

We'll share the work as it ships, along with what the research teaches us about a user group the industry mostly designs at rather than for. In the meantime, if you're a student or a parent who's survived the accommodation hunt recently and has opinions (everyone who has, does), our research team would genuinely love to hear them - shout.