IKEA ‘Keys’

In the quest to redefine customer loyalty experiences, IKEA embarked on a transformative journey to revamp their renowned loyalty program, IKEA Family. As the Design Director on the project, I played a pivotal role in driving research, ideation, design, experimentation, and prototyping processes.

Collaborating with the larger team at Fahrenheit 212, we aimed to create a loyalty program that would seamlessly integrate into customers’ inspiration, planning, and implementation journeys, ultimately driving engagement and lifetime value.

Research and Ideation

The project began with an in-depth research phase, where we delved into the hopes and dreams of customers to deliver behavioral insights. This invaluable knowledge formed the foundation for our ideation process, enabling us to identify key pain points in ‘home confidence’ and opportunities within the existing loyalty program. Through collaborative workshops, we developed a strategic vision for IKEA Family, and Ikea ‘keys’ was created: a loyalty program that would go beyond mere discounts and offers.

Design and Prototyping

With a clear direction in mind, I led the design team in translating our vision into tangible solutions. Through iterative design cycles, we crafted an innovative rewards and incentives mechanism centered around earning and utilising the infamous IKEA “HEX Key” within the IKEA Family reward ecosystem. These Keys were earned through various interactions, including purchases, community engagement, and progression in customers’ home project journeys. Our goal was to empower customers to unlock rewards that addressed their specific pain points, providing valuable support throughout their projects.

Experimentation

To ensure the viability and effectiveness of our design, we conducted extensive experimentation and assumption testing; both digital and physical. My favourite being a takeover of IKEA Tottenham Court Road store, where we introduced a physical gamified experience that rewarded customers for being engaged in store. Through user feedback sessions, usability studies, and A/B testing, we refined the  feature, behavioural flows and UI.

Design

Final design handover entailed creating extremely detailed interactive prototypes for further internal development. As the design director, I am really proud of the role I played in this transformative project, part of a small team of people. We successfully created a uniquely IKEA loyalty program that has the potential to redefine customer engagement for IKEA while creating home design confidence for customers.

Wireframes and interactive prototyping

Rollout

The IKEA Family keys reward platform continues to be rolled out around the world. Right now you can earn keys for things like logging in to your IKEA Family profile, creating and saving a wish list, attending an IKEA Family event, and attending an in-store or virtual planning appointment.

Concept reward