Not A Second Bedroom
Repurpose bank branches as entrepreneurial hubs for female-led SMEs.
2024.4-2024.7
KEYWORDS: Service Design, Space Design, Health&Wellbeing, SMEs, Bank, Entrepreneurs, Gender Equality
FEATURE: Academic Group Project
About:
Transforming under-utilized high street bank branches into vibrant community hubs, NAB provides female entrepreneurs with the resources, space, and support to overcome systemic barriers and thrive.
Collaboration:
We greatly appreciate the support from our collaborator. We had the opportunity to present our idea to Nick Wilsdon, the Impact Manager at Nesta, to evaluate our project's feasibility.
Context
Desk Research
Background:
This project began with noticing:
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Only 20% of all entrepreneurs are women, and they receive a mere 2% of VC funding. This discrepancy is often attributed to gender-specific limitations such as lack of professional literacy, networks, and pitching skills.
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However, data shows that investing in women yields a higher ROI compared to men.
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This indicates that it’s not a lack of ability, but rather the need for women to exhibit even greater capabilities and resilience to gain recognition.
Research
On-site Observation
Expert Interview
User interview
Developing Persona
Primary Research:
Objectives:
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Deconstruct female entrepreneurs’ unique challenges
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Identify the most vulnerable user segment
we conducted in-depth interviews with 10 entrepreneurs, including both female and male across different age ranges and startup stages. By comparing their stories, enables us to see the particular struggles of solo entrepreneurs who own Small-Medium Businesses in the creative industry.
Archetype:
We’ve concluded them into 2 typical archetypes based on the incentives of choosing to become their own boss.
Student Innovators:
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They have sparks and skills. After being encouraged by their friends and family, they see pursuing their own business as a learning opportunity at school with less risks.
Career Transitioners:
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Who have years of working experience, but gradually loses faith in corporate culture, and want to realign her own values by pursuing what they believe in.
Insights
Journey Mapping
01. Systemic barriers made bedroom studios a default workspace for female founders
Even though they aspired to go for their dreams, systemic barriers have sadly harmed the ambition and confidence of female entrepreneurs and made them start their early ventures by working from home as a cost-effective option. Although they feel they will be more productive if they have an office, they can't find affordable options and safe places to work late. They believe they have no better choices.
02. Mixing of concerns makes them feel too chaotic and directionless to change
As they faced different challenges and pressures throughout the whole journey, their small bedroom as the workspace where so many things happened and held a mixing of emotions, ultimately made them feel too chaotic and directionless, resulting in a feeling of being stuck in their bedroom and unable to scale.
Switch to see their journey
03. Theory of Boundaries:
To summarise, we identified that the damaged confidence and ambition of women entrepreneurs lead them to more easily choose low-cost, low-risk bedroom offices as default. This spatial confinement leads to chaotic time/effort boundaries, mixing work and leisure, sacrificing their social life while limiting their network expansion. These unhealthy boundaries cause emotional chaos, ultimately disabling them from taking action.
Opportunities
How Might We let female entrepreneurs Reshape and Rebuild Boundaries Autonomously?
01. How might we set protective boundaries between work and personal lives?
02. How might we break limiting boundaries to regain clarity and direction?
03. How might we offer accessible spaces as better alternatives to work and social?
Through further research ( A survey, On-site observations, & Competitor Analysis), we validated:
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The necessity of using external working spaces;
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The key determinants that influence their choices in using them;
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The gaps between the existing service landscape.
So, who could be our partner that possesses both high interest and power to help us achieve our goal of creating a meaningful workspace?
Traditional Bank Branches → Future of Branching
Our desk research shows hundreds of traditional bank branches worldwide are shutting down precipitously due to sharp drops in usage. Some of the banks like Santander, Bank of Ireland, and Barclays have started transforming part of their spaces into new uses.
Service
Our Solution:
Therefore, We would like to introduce Not A Second Bedroom (NAB) as a future model of branching, holds value for the highly competitive banking industry.
Here we aim to reimagine traditional bank branches as entrepreneurial hubs, to create spaces that are not second bedrooms, providing spaces for female entrepreneurs to learn | Meet | Work | Connect, so that they can invest in their business and their holistic health at the same time.
Mechanism of Change:
Collaboration with bank spaces and the distribution of NAB entrepreneurial hubs across local areas can offer female entrepreneurs two main benefits: Affordable costs & Safe locations
Design Conditions:
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Spatial Design: provide female entrepreneurs with basic modular zones and essential amenities within professional aesthetic and legitimate site locations.
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Financial Services: Opening a business account is the first step for female entrepreneurs to conduct banking. NAB as host, gives out gifts like cardholders as part of our marketing strategy to attract customers, promote our services, and encourage them to more business banking services.
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Social Opportunities: offer a range of activities like swapping business cards on walls, engaging in seminars and third-party leisure events at lower prices.
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Wellbeing Services: We added a warm barista team and healthy food options to our space. Once they subscribe to the newsletter, they will receive work rest reminders to ensure they get proper rest.
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Service Ecosystem Expansion: We aim to connect with more third-party partners to expand and enhance our service system to ensure that female entrepreneurs can experience supportive and safe living experiences even outside of NAB.
Impact
Service
Prototyping
Value Proposition
Value Proposition:
What female entrepreneurs need: Better well-being and business spaces, as well as tailored resources.
What high street bank branches provide: Trust, legitimacy, safety, and business banking services.
NAB connects them by simply upgrading the under-utilised spaces of traditional banks.
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For traditional banks: This approach utilises branch spaces, attracts customer acquisition, and enhances the bank's sense of social responsibility and brand image by supporting an underrepresented group.
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For female entrepreneurs: This provides more affordable, proximate workspaces with better rates for holistic health and business enhancement. Utilising the space of high street banks enhances trust, legitimacy, and security because to the established reputation and geographic location of the banks, making the businesses of female founders more credible.
Based on these considerations, we propose different affordable tiered packages, allowing even people outside the NAB system or free members to access part of our services.
Validation - Test& prototype:
To test the proposed solution, we built a website showcasing NAB's detailed services and an Instagram account, distributed an EOI survey;
during the WIP, Exhibition at Royal College of Art, we had conversations with over 40 people. Interestingly, our services did not just get female entrepreneurs' interests but also related to freelancers and remote workers, showing a stronger market desirability.
Click to enter the official Not A Second Bedroom Website:
Reflection:
At the current stage, we also realised that over-reliance on banks’ interests and capacities may impede the speed of implementation. So rather than focus on one partner, we want to establish criteria and conditions for choosing wider space providers: including, as well-known brand in safe locations that has a capacity of equipped amenities while needing a transformation of space. Consider deploying multiple models with hotels, co-working spaces, architecture companies, real estate, and other entities that also have the rights and resources, we want to embrace more opportunities to make NAB a reality.
Special Thanks
We are grateful to all the interviewees who generously shared their ideas. Special acknowledgment goes to Eleanor Nadimi, Tahira Resalat, Rebecca Leppard, and Ripple Chen for their experience and insights during the research and feedback stages of our work.
We extend our sincere appreciation to Nick Wilsdon at Nesta for inspiring us with his expertise in social impact and for providing invaluable insights into the mechanism of change that have shaped our approach.
Special thanks to our tutor, Hoda Judah Armani, for his unwavering support and guidance throughout the entire project. Your belief in our abilities and encouragement has been a driving force behind our efforts.