Smart home experience
The introduction of smart home devices to a retailer historically specializing in simple, analog furniture presented new opportunities as well as new challenges.
Broadly, our assignment was to show these devices in an environment that allowed customers to test them out, learn how they work, what they can do, and come to a thorough understanding of the impact smart home systems could have on their lives at home. This campaign was comprised of two main parts:
• Smart lighting
• SYMFONISK Wi-Fi speaker collection (collaboration with Sonos)
I collaborated with visual merchandisers and interior designers to develop display solutions in several areas throughout the store. I was responsible for leading the development of graphic communication for these solutions, planning and leading the implementation in stores.
In order to secure the retail space required to display smart lighting at a level optimizing its sales and brand equity potential, the entire lighting department had to be reimagined and planned anew.
In early ideation, we explored and latched onto the concept of using a functional room setting as the primary method of displaying smart lighting and the focal point of the entire lighting department. Doing so disrupted the long-established standard of only placing room settings in the Showroom area of the store.
The secondary method of displaying smart lighting would be at the point-of-purchase where the product would be merchandised, an area adjacent to the room setting. The high sections of back walls in IKEA stores are used to show products in a way that helps customers identify areas and product groups from a distance. Since showing bulbs on their own would not give any visual clues differentiating it from standard light bulbs, I decided to use large graphics to help suggest the difference in function. At this stage, we had not yet determined whether this would be executed using printed graphics, video, or projection.
The first step in rethinking how technical information would be communicated for light bulbs was to discontinue the use of complicated, fixed signage in favor of small booklets that could be picked up throughout the area. I wanted to take the pressure off someone trying to rapidly get digest large amounts of information in a particular spot. With a booklet, the customer can:
• move about freely
• read while they interact with product displays
• take it home to give their purchase more consideration
Individual tags with technical information were paired with each bulb display to help the customer identify products, compare them, and cross-reference with the information found in the booklets.
We wanted to use the façade of the room as a space to tell a story about smart lighting and encourage customers to enter the space by indicating something about what’s inside. While it was a standard to include printed messaging outside many room settings in the store, the special focus on smart, digital solutions in this space demanded we deliver content in a more savvy method. I selected projection as an appropriate solution that would provide the benefits of:
• attracting attention with light and motion
• telling a more complex story through the dynamic use of space and time
• literally using light to tell a story about light
We abandoned a big, bold approach to projection content in favor of smaller, more restained content, leaving a vast amount of black space as a break from the visual complexity of the merchandised space around the room.
While our global partners worked to finalize the IKEA Home smart mobile app and a demo version to be used in stores, I moved ahead to plan for a temporary solution using remotes and a permanent solution for using tablets when the demo app was finally released. Custom holders for each of these were to be paired with labels that described how to test the controls The labels also identified and priced each of the products used to build the solution.
While leading stores through the implementation of lighting department remodels and smart lighting displays, we began to develop solutions for merchandising the Wi-Fi speaker collection that had been developed with Sonos. We were able to carve out some space in the lighting department itself, and we did this because one of the key products in the collection was a table lamp with an integrated speaker. We also planned to layer speakers into the room setting in the lighting department as well as three other room settings in the Showroom. Sonos developed and provided touchscreen demo controls to use with our displays.
We faced a missed opportunity with the SYMFONISK collection had we only displayed the product in the lighting department and in a few room settings. Unlike smart lighting, this was a completely new product category for IKEA and it was something customers would not be expecting during their typical journey throughout the store. A little nudge in visibility within the store could go a long way. Our business leaders understood this and approved the use of a relatively large space in the Showroom to celebrate this exciting new product collection.
Not all stores were able to dedicate the extra space for this solution. But stores that did saw double the sales compared to stores with only the in-department solution.
Meeting the challenge to deliver technical information in a manner that was understandable, while at the same time reaching out to customers in a way that appealed to some of their more emotional needs was an incredibly rewarding process for me. I was surprised by the level to which light and music had an influence on how customers behave in the retail space.
