Brio Experiences
Last summer our Innovation team was tasked with developing a high growth gig-economy platform focused on social good. Instead of thinking about the common challenges faced by our generation, we found the most interesting under-served population to be recent retirees and aging seniors. Thus was born Brio.
Our team won the McCormick Engineering Innovation Competition, and we have since been accepted into the New Venture accelerator, Kellogg’s start-up incubator that backs entrepreneurial-minded students. We are currently using our funding to host live events in the local community in order to hypothesis-test our theses, gather feedback, and iterate on our concept.
Company Overview
So, what is brio?
By 2020, 117 million American seniors will require assistance. By 2030, all baby boomers will be above the age of sixty-five. This presents a fast-growing and untapped marketplace.
Brio is a gig-economy digital platform that delivers authentic and fulfilling experiences to adult seniors who are still living independently and are in search of meaningful connection. Our goal is to foster communities among seniors by empowering creative freelancers, hobbyists, and retirees to provide fun, inclusive, and curated events.
Initial hypotheses and design research
Initially, we thought this platform would serve seniors by helping them accomplish daily tasks and chores around the house (i.e. cleaning, grocery shopping, running errands, etc.). But after conducting ethnographic interviews with seniors, their caregivers, and their children, we learned that the most pervasive issue in the senior community is actually social isolation and loneliness.
So we changed our course, and completely revamped our business model to focus on bringing inclusion and meaningful experiences (similar to AirBnb experiences) to active adults. We built out a prototype platform that brings together local experience providers (budding comedians, artists, thesis students, professors, chefs, etc.) with adult seniors to host hyper-curated events that increase excitement and connection in their daily lives.
Dual-sided Marketplace: enabling local experience Providers
The Brio platform is also designed to make it as easy as possible for new providers to host experiences. Experience providers can choose from a selection of pre-populated templates, or they can elect to build their own and save it for future use.
These tools have been A/B tested in the market using rapid prototypes to continually hone and improve their functionality. Brio’s pricing algorithm will ultimately provide suggestions to help experience providers budget outings and know up front how much they’ll earn. These tools make it easy for providers to create delightful experiences while on the go. Providers can tailor their events based on the audience and can receive real-time feedback directly through Brio.
Functional Prototype
