Project Details

Year: 2016 (4 weeks)
Role: Interaction, UI/UX, Prototyping, Video
Project Type: Experience Design (Academic)
Awards: Best UX by Students; People's Choice
Team: Tiffany Cheng, Haley Clarke, Gilbert Fung, Robbie Sebullen, Maurice Yu

Slide Deck   Process Book    Live Demo

IKEA Stay is an experience that allows new homeowners to test out IKEA products that best suit their needs through Airbnb listings.

Proposal

IKEA Stay is a blend between a physical and digital showroom that allows people who are moving to a new city to visualize the way their homes could look and get a further understanding of what products work for them.

Repositioning IKEA to blend their popular showroom experience with their online experience in order for customers to engage in IKEA's online platform. Doing so will increase IKEA's digital sales.

Problem and Research

IKEA’s business problem is that their business model is less suited to online selling compared to other retailers, as it has mostly relied on shoppers visiting their physical showroom experience and collecting purchases themselves in-store. This has resulted in IKEA falling behind other furniture retailers in online sales.

Julie Laksy, acclaimed journalist, editor and critic for i-D magazine

Opportunity

People are moving to new cities for work and staying in short-term housing spaces while searching for a permanent home. I helped realize the micro-trend that people are starting to rent out their houses for Airbnb purposes and usually furnishing them with IKEA products. We took this opportunity and proposed a collaboration project between IKEA and Airbnb because of their similarities in core values and their competencies in their respective fields. We felt that it just made sense for this natural partnership.

Proposed touchpoints to intervene

Value

With this proposal, all 3 business stakeholders are able to benefit from each other through a mutual relationship.

IKEA, Airbnb, and Hosts will all benefit from this program in their own ways respectively

Ideation

Some initial ideation, rejected ideas, and sketches

Solution

We found that IKEA's e-commerce efforts are lacking compared to their physical showroom experience, therefore we are introducing an experience where guests can get to live with IKEA products in the context of a real home. Guests can bookmark, learn, and share their favorites on the tablet provided upon arrival at their IKEA Stay home. After their stay, they are invited to revisit their favorite products on the IKEA Stay website, connecting them back to the rejuvenated e-commerce experience.

Flow

1. Book IKEA Stay through Airbnb website
2. Arrive at Airbnb where guests can try out featured IKEA products
3. Bookmark products you like, learn more, order now, or share with family and friends
4. Receive email invitation to web experience
5. Revisit and explore products in new contexts

Discovery & Booking

There are two discovery touchpoints for IKEA Stay. One is under the "Stay" menu item on IKEA's top navigation. This will lead them to a landing page where it explains the experience and a call-to-action where guests can start searching and browsing for places. Entering a search query will bring them directly to the second discovery touchpoint – Airbnb's search results with IKEA Stay homes highlighted with an IKEA logo tag.

Tablet Experience

Upon arrival at their IKEA Stay, guests are greeted with a tablet where they can learn more about the products featured in the house. We chose this platform as it removes the cognitive overhead of having to download a separate app on their personal device. This tablet also allows for contextually relevant information to be shown.

Bookmarking

Guests can get a quick glance of all IKEA products used in their IKEA Stay home. They can quickly bookmark the items that they are interested in. All bookmarked items go to the bookmarks page which will then be automatically sent to the guests’ email after their stay.

Product Detail

Guests can tap into each item to learn more about the product details, such as pricing, specifications, material, customer reviews, availability, etc. Here they can quickly scroll through all items within that room and bookmark the ones they like. We also know that the opinion of friends and family is important when investing in furniture, therefore guests have to option to share items via social media platforms.

Email (during/post-stay)

After their stay, guests receive an email reminding of their IKEA Stay experience and encourages them to revisit the products they were interested in.

Web Experience (post-stay)

Once guests click on the link in the email, they are greeted with a landing page that invites them to revisit their IKEA Stay home. Guests can view all bookmarked items at a glance.

Room View

Interactive hotspots on the context shots allow users to hover over to find out more about the items they are interested in. They can also explore other rooms within the house and also view all items in that specific room.

Product Detail

The context feature within the product details page allows users to discover how other homeowners may have used the item. This screen also allows users to explore the room in detail.

Success Metrics

We can measure success and gain metrics and trends to influence future actions for both IKEA and Airbnb hosts.

Role

Whereas all team members had a contribution to the research and experience design, my main role was as the UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, and Prototyper. I designed, sketched, and produced interfaces (tablet) and made sure all interactions were useful, usable, and delightful for the user. In order to help my team succeed and stand out, I quickly self-learned the rapid prototyping tool Flinto so I could quickly produce an interactive prototype for the tablet interface to communicate our idea within our team and to our audience. Doing so allowed us to explain our concept with clarity and detail. In addition to my design roles, I also filmed our final video which received high praise from our audience for its clarity and production quality.

Outcome

This was one of the most intense projects I’ve worked on during school and has helped me dive into the realm of Experience Design. This project helped me showcase the best of my abilities in design thinking and execution. As a result this project ended up being one of the top projects in my class and was highly praised by the teaching staff, guest critics, and peers. It also won two awards at the Vancouver User Experience Awards 2016 for Best UX by Students and People's Choice Award voted in by the Vancouver UX Community. The audience agreed that our presentation was extremely clear and appreciated the depth in all areas such as the client research, touchpoints, interactions, video, etc.

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