IKEA Group

Leadership

One vision, many hands

Transforming the in-store experience required more than developing individual digital products. It meant aligning people, disciplines and perspectives around a common understanding of what the future IKEA store should be.

Working closely with the product manager and product owners, I led the UX and product design team, established a shared design direction and coordinated collaborations with some of the world's leading international design agencies.

The goal was to ensure that every concept, product and interaction contributed to one coherent customer experience, rather than becoming a collection of disconnected digital solutions.

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Making the full range accessible

The starting point was understanding the opportunities and challenges of the new city-store concept. With significantly less physical space, customers could no longer rely on walking through the traditional IKEA experience with multiple showrooms to discover the full assortment.

We explored how digital experiences could extend the physical store, making the entire IKEA range accessible regardless of what was on display.

Equally important was preserving what made the traditional IKEA experience valuable: inspiration, discovery, the ability to explore possibilities and the confidence to make informed decisions.

The ambition was not to replace the physical experience, but to make it more capable.

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Product browsing & interaction

How do customers discover and explore products when much of the assortment is no longer physically available?

We developed concepts for digital browsing and product interaction that allowed customers to move beyond the limitations of the showroom. The focus was on making exploration intuitive, engaging and connected to the physical store experience.

Digital interfaces became a way to extend the showroom, allowing customers to discover products, explore alternatives and navigate the wider IKEA range.

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Product & Category

The traditional IKEA store uses physical environments to inspire customers and help them navigate a vast assortment. Smaller city stores required new ways to provide that same sense of discovery.

We explored how digital product and category experiences could make the full range easier to understand and navigate, connecting inspiration with relevant products and helping customers move naturally from exploration to selection.

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Profile, range search & compare

Helping customers find the right product is only part of the experience. They also need to evaluate alternatives and make confident decisions.

We explored digital tools for product search, comparison and personalisation, allowing customers to navigate the wider assortment based on their individual needs and preferences.

The objective was to make complex purchase decisions easier, particularly when customers could not physically experience every available product.

Evaluation

Harajuku exploration store

Opened in 2020, IKEA Harajuku became a testing ground for exploring the future of IKEA's city-store experience. As a completely new store, it offered a rare opportunity to build the experience from the ground up, rather than adapting concepts to an existing retail environment.

New concepts developed by the In-store Digital Experience team could be introduced, tested and evaluated as part of the overall store experience.

Japan, and Harajuku in particular, was a deliberate choice. Surrounded by some of the world's most innovative and experimental retail experiences, it provided an ideal setting to challenge established ideas, learn from customer behaviour and explore how digital experiences could become a natural part of the physical store.

Research & Insights

Understanding the complete customer journey

To establish a stronger foundation for future in-store experiences, we conducted an extensive research initiative in collaboration with IKEA's global app team.

We combined usability testing of the IKEA app with customer interviews to understand how people navigated the relationship between digital and physical touchpoints throughout their shopping journey.

Alongside this, we synthesised findings from several previous research initiatives, bringing fragmented knowledge together into a more comprehensive understanding of customer needs, behaviours and pain points.

The work helped identify recurring patterns, key insights and opportunities to improve the overall customer journey, providing a shared foundation for future product and experience development.

Impact

Bridging physical and digital retail

The work helped establish a common design direction for IKEA's evolving store formats, connecting digital product development with the broader ambition of bringing the full IKEA range closer to customers.

Beyond individual products and concepts, it created a foundation for more consistent in-store digital experiences, where technology extends the possibilities of physical retail rather than simply adding another layer to it.