UX Case Story: A New App Feature Makes Ikea Uniquely Yours
Ikea is the world’s largest furniture retailer, popular for its stylish, affordable, and easy to assemble products that lend themselves to be transformed into unexpected ways or enhanced into more personalized items. There is interest amongst the Ikea consumer base in using Ikea products for Do-it-Yourself (DIY) home decor projects. Ikea wants to support this trend by providing a mobile app feature that highlights DIY projects using Ikea products in unexpected ways to showcase to consumers the various ways these products could be used or enhanced.
Ikea wants a mobile app feature to support Do-it-Yourself (DIY)ers using their products in unexpected ways to showcase to consumers the various ways these products could be used or enhanced.
For my second project as part of General Assembly’s User Experience Design Immersive program, two teammates and I were challenged to create Ikea’s requested feature to integrate seamlessly with users' online shopping experience.
Deliverables:
15-minute group presentation
Hi-fi prototype
Project duration:
10 days
Team:
Andrea Nuñez
Rachel Wang
Miranda Shilati
But first, research
We conducted user interviews with two target user groups to study: experienced DIYers and Ikea consumers. We hypothesized that since the use of IKEA products in DIY projects is an increasing trend in home decor, then having Ikea showcase DIYers projects with their products may increase consumer interest to shop Ikea.
Our research goals were to learn about:
- Consumer interest in DIY projects
- DIYers level of interest in having their projects shared
- Consumer inspiration to purchase Ikea items
Participant Recruitment
I created a screener survey to recruit participants from two user types: experienced DIYers and Ikea consumers. We screened for experienced DIYers for people who rated their craft skills advanced, shop at Ikea or from brands with similar costs and style, and share their projects on social media. For the consumer, we screened for people interested in home decor DIYing, rated their skills as beginner or intermediate, shop at Ikea or from brands with similar cost and style. Out of the four experienced DIYers screened, all qualified to be interviewed. Out of the seven consumers screened, five qualified. The majority of participants were young professional women with an average age of 30.
User Interviews
As a team, we conducted two sets of qualitative interviews — one for each target user. We interviewed the four experienced DIYers and five Ikea consumers who were screened and qualified. 30-minute interviews were held on Skype calls or in-person in New York City. All interviews were audio-recorded for transcription and note-taking purposes.
For consumers, we asked questions to learn about their DIY and shopping behavior, how they seek inspiration and motivation to DIY, what they want to improve on, what excites and deters them about DIYing.
For DIYers, we asked how they use Ikea items for their projects, how they gained their DIYing experience, how they normally showcase their work, what platforms they use, how they feel about Ikea showcasing their projects.
Synthesis & Findings
After the interviews were completed, we got to thinking. We took all the insights gathered from each interview and affinity mapped to uncover reoccurring themes in our data. We found the following insights:
Ikea consumers revealed:
- Projects need to be affordable and easy to do to personalize their space. Consumers are big on having their home reflect who they are and like to explore how they can create that
- Due to their beginners or intermediate skills level, they want access to easy and clear tutorials to feel motivated to create and follow through with a project
- They would like to build their confidence and skills to create larger home projects
Experienced DIYers, on the other hand, revealed:
- Showcasing their projects is dependent on whether they will receive recognition or publicity
- They would like more social media following to increase the exposure of their work
- However, if showcasing for Ikea, they’d expect to be paid and credited to post their work if used to attract consumers to a brand
We decided to narrow down these insights to address consumers’ needs for access to affordable and easy-to-do DIY projects that fit their skills level and can contribute to building their skills and confidence to tackle larger home projects.
“A lot of times the instructions seem doable like anyone can do it and then you don’t so it kind of makes you feel bad. Incompetent like you can’t even do that basic little thing. Sometimes you don’t even feel confident enough so you don’t even try. You take a hit to your self esteem.
- Ikea consumer Reyni, Program Coordinator, 33
For the experienced DIYers, we wanted to address their needs to have their work credited and recognized as well as help increase their exposure by making their social media presence visible.
“Would I get a shout out? Would I get the credit for it?…I would rather get paid for something cause time is money. I have two degrees.”
- Experienced DIYer Jose, Architect, 31
We confirmed interest amongst the Ikea consumer base in using Ikea products for DIY home decor projects. Since Ikea wants to support this trend by showcasing skilled DIYer’s projects using their products, we needed to find an opportunity to make this happen.
Problem Statement
Ikea consumers often lack the confidence or knowledge to complete a DIY home decor project on their own.
How might we connect skilled DIYers to the Ikea consumer base to show them the various ways Ikea products can be used or enhanced?
Meet our Users
To ensure we always have users in mind when designing a solution, we created two personas to represent our target users. These personas are created from interview insights to represent their main needs, goals, behaviors, and pain points regarding the problem at hand. Our primary persona is Ikea consumer Gabby:
Our secondary persona, the experienced DIYer, is Emily:
The Solution
We began ideation by holding a design studio in which each teammate sketched their design within the five minutes given. We held two rounds to ensure we addressed the insights we uncovered through the interviews to inform the design.
We decided to include a DIY search bar on the home page to make it easy and convenient for users to search home decor projects made with Ikea products from this design studio. Users could either land on the desired Ikea product, and if a DIY project is showcased, a “DIY” logo will appear on the main product image on the product detail page. Keeping in mind that our Ikea users reported they want easy and accessible instructions fit for their skills level, we decided to include a video tutorial on the DIY project page and the opportunity to credit the DIY artist by including space for a short bio and picture.
Feature Prioritization
After sketching our initial ideas and sharing them, we got to feature prioritization by using the MoSCow method to filter out any unnecessary features that would deter us from creating a minimum viable product, a product that includes at the very least the “must-haves” users need to perform their tasks in compliance with the business objective the client has.
Therefore, we knew we had to design features that included:
- DIY project image
- Keyword search for DIY projects
- Easily accessible DIY tutorials, instructions, and materials list
- Artist credit
- A reference to the original product
- Call-to-action button of “Add to List” close to the product
Once we settled on our must-haves, we included should haves, could haves, and won’t have to remain focused on designing an easy and useful app feature that meets our Ikea consumer Gabby’s DIY project and shopping needs.
Design Solution
We designed a mid-fidelity wireframe with user flows that allowed users to:
- Add their desired Ikea item to their shopping list
- View a visual tutorial of a featured DIY project
- Access the instructions and materials needed for the DIY project
Then we created a prototype to test our design and see how it measured up with user testing.
Usability Testing
We set out for two rounds of usability testing with four participants for each round. We took on guerilla recruiting at the General Assembly NYC campus, in which we provided participants three tasks to complete. Though we reached a 100% completion rate for each round, we had some design changes to make. The main design change post-round 1 included a better DIY search feature in which users could search not only a DIY project but also instructions and tutorials. After round 2, users reported it would be best to have the “add to list” button directly under the product and clarity on what they are downloading when they access DIY projects instructions and materials. Users reported a high average score on ease of use and satisfaction for both test rounds and found the system's functions to be well-integrated.
Next Steps
While the first two rounds of testing yielded positive results, we still need to improve the confidence and learnability scores. Therefore, we recommend continuing to test the prototype to address concerns about the usability of our solution.
