The recent Shaping the Nation report published by Mindshare and Meet the 85% makes one thing clear: where people live isn't a backdrop to their lives, it is a fundamental part of who they are.
Geography shapes identity, trust, belonging, optimism and even how open people are to change. It influences what people value, who they listen to, and how they experience the world around them, and yet, most services, experiences and communications are still designed as if people exist in a vacuum. Flattened into personas, reduced to demographics and treated as users rather than humans shaped by lived experience.
This gap between how people actually live and how organisations design is where friction grows. It is also where opportunity lives.
At Thrive, this is the space our consulting focuses on: creating the conditions for people, systems and places to work together in ways that feel human, grounded and sustainable.
One of the most powerful ideas in Shaping the Nation is the reframing of geography – not as a media variable or postcode filter, but as a lens into people's identities, emotions and behaviours.
The report shows that people’s connection to place affects everything from life satisfaction to trust in institutions. City dwellers may value ambition and progress but feel less belonging. Towns often feel left behind, disconnected and pessimistic. Rural and coastal communities can have strong identity and pride, yet feel ignored by decision-makers and national narratives
From a service design perspective, this matters deeply.
Services don't exist in isolation – they're experienced within specific social, cultural and emotional contexts. A health service designed for a dense, well-connected city will not land the same way in a town with poor transport and low institutional trust. A digital experience optimised for speed and efficiency may work for an ambitious urban audience but feel cold and alienating in communities where trust is built slowly, through familiarity and local voice.
Good service design starts by understanding this context, not abstracting it away.
Many organisations operate at scale. National charities. Public services. Membership bodies. Platforms. Their systems are designed centrally, but experienced locally.
Shaping the Nation highlights a crucial tension here. People’s primary orientation is local, not national. Trust flows through neighbourhoods, local media, personal networks and shared experiences. National narratives often feel distant or irrelevant, especially in places that feel overlooked or misrepresented
This is where experience design often falls short.
Too many experiences are designed to be consistent rather than meaningful. Consistency becomes the goal, instead of relevance. But people do not experience services as brand guidelines or process diagrams. They experience them through moments that either acknowledge their reality or ignore it.
At Thrive, our experience design work starts by mapping these lived realities. We look beyond touchpoints to understand the emotional landscape people are navigating. Where trust is strong. Where it is fragile. Where frustration has become normalised. Where pride still exists, waiting to be amplified.
Designing for experience is not about polishing interfaces. It is about shaping how people feel when they interact with a system, especially when that system holds power over their lives.
Another recurring theme in Shaping the Nation is disconnection. Between London and the rest of the UK, between institutions and communities, between ambition and opportunity – and this mirrors what we see inside organisations.
As systems scale, efficiency often becomes the dominant metric. Processes are streamlined. Journeys are optimised. Automation is introduced. All sensible moves. But when efficiency becomes the primary lens, something important is lost, and people start to feel processed instead of understood.
Service design exists to counter this. Not by rejecting efficiency, but by balancing it with empathy. By asking not just “does this work?” but “how does this feel, here, for these people?”
The report shows that towns, in particular, often feel stuck, bored or left behind. Designing services that simply assume motivation, digital confidence or trust can deepen this sense of alienation.
Good consulting work challenges these assumptions. It creates space to question whether systems are actually aligned to the realities they are meant to serve.
Trust is one of the most striking threads in Shaping the Nation. The report demonstrates how trust varies dramatically by location. Cities tend to trust a wider range of sources. Rural and coastal communities rely more heavily on local voices, local media and personal networks. Towns often sit in the middle – sceptical and disengaged. This has profound implications for service and experience design.
Trust isn't built through clever messaging alone. It is built through credibility, familiarity and relevance. If an experience feels imported, generic or tone-deaf, trust erodes quickly. Especially in places that already feel misrepresented.
At Thrive, this insight shapes how we approach both strategy and delivery. We look at where trust already exists and how services can align with it, rather than trying to override it. That might mean designing services that surface local voices, or creating experiences that feel grounded in place, not imposed from above, because trust isn't a brand value, it's an outcome of good design.
One of the most human insights in the report is the distinction between identity and belonging. People may recognise where they live as part of who they are, but still not feel they belong there.
This matters because belonging affects engagement, advocacy and resilience. People who feel connected to their place are more optimistic, more trusting and more open to participation
Service design can either strengthen or weaken this sense of belonging. Experiences that acknowledge people’s reality, language and culture reinforce connection, whereas those that ignore it subtly signal “this isn't for you,”, and over time, those signals accumulate.
Our consulting work often focuses on these signals. Where language alienates. Where assumptions exclude. Where systems unintentionally reinforce distance. By redesigning services with belonging in mind, organisations can move from transactional interactions to meaningful relationships.
Many of the organisations Thrive works with exist to improve lives. Charities. Health and care providers. Purpose-led brands. They are already motivated by positive intent, but intent alone is not enough.
Shaping the Nation shows that people’s experiences of systems, places and institutions are shaped by decades of accumulated signals. Feeling ignored. Feeling misunderstood. Feeling invisible. These are not solved by a new campaign or a refreshed website.
They are addressed by designing systems that recognise complexity. That respect difference. That adapt to context rather than flatten it.
This is why our consulting work starts upstream. Before solutions. Before channels. Before delivery. We work with organisations to understand the conditions that shape behaviour and experience, then design services that can thrive within them.
At its core, Shaping the Nation is a reminder that people aren't generic, places aren't interchangeable and experiences aren't neutral. Service and experience design exist to navigate this complexity, not simplify it away.
For organisations serious about impact, the challenge is clear; stop designing as if everyone lives the same life, in the same place, with the same expectations, and start designing systems that listen first, adapt thoughtfully and respect the lived reality of the people they serve.
That is how trust is rebuilt and engagement deepens and it's also how organisations create the conditions for people, and places, to thrive.