Student housing made sustainable
Challenge
In early 2024, Homie approached me to help build a challenger brand in the UK student housing market from the ground up. Their mission was to rethink the student rental experience - making it more sustainable, more human and more trustworthy in a market dominated by faceless landlords and overpriced, poorly maintained properties.
I was brought in before the company officially launched, working as their sole designer and strategic partner throughout the founding phase.
From the strategy workshop
Research & Strategic Foundation
I started where any good design process starts: understanding the system before designing the solution.
Through stakeholder interviews and analysising the student housing journey, I built a full service blueprint mapping the experience from awareness through to contract end - covering customer actions, front-of-stage interactions, back-of-stage processes and support. This gave the founding team a shared picture of where Homie needed to show up, what students and parents needed at each stage, and where the biggest gaps were versus the competition.
From that foundation, I facilitated a brand discovery workshop with the team to define values, tone of voice and positioning. Homie became: friendly not preachy, sustainable but practical, relatable not juvenile. Collaboratively we developed three personas (Peter, Shelley, Ann) spanning the core user types: the student renter, the student searching independently, and the reassurance-seeking parent.
A competitor analysis across the UK student housing market informed both the UX decisions and the visual differentiation strategy.
Translating research into design decisions
Competitor analysis
Wireframes
Design
With the strategic foundation in place, I moved into design — building every touchpoint from scratch: logo and visual identity, an inclusive illustration system, UX flows and wireframes, high-fidelity UI, website and marketing assets.
The design system was built to do specific strategic work: warm and personal enough to earn student trust, credible enough to reassure parents, and distinctive enough to stand apart from corporate competitors at a glance.
Outcome
Homie launched with a clear user promise, strong internal alignment, and a brand that gave them the confidence to expand. Within the first year they grew from zero to hundreds of rented properties.
"You put in place a framework that encouraged my partners and I to think critically about the strategy. You helped balance our differing objectives, and you weren't afraid to challenge us. The workshop we did in London was the first time I felt the brand really taking shape."
— Tom Ferber, CEO of Homie