IKEA Hej

Project

Client: IKEA

Project: Digital Product

Year: 2017

Naming
Creative Direction
Design Direction
App Icon
Product design
User Experience
User Interface

Credits

SPACE10
Shape

How can you engage employees in a company so big that most parts of its workings are far removed from your daily routines? We partnered with SPACE10 to explore how the promise of a conversational interface might deepen the employee relationship culture at large.

When you work for IKEA there’s a great chance you only know a very small percentage of your global colleague base. With offices, stores and warehouses around the globe, and a very diverse workforce, having a shared company culture becomes very challenging.

But what if you could bring people a little closer together? Not just for the sake of culture, but also knowledge sharing, innovation and general bonding? What if you could have conversations with all of IKEA right from your phone? IKEA’s innovation lab SPACE10 had been researching the future potential of conversational interfaces, which by many are described as the next digital frontier. The idea that you could have an AI powered true virtual assistant that doesn’t just answer questions based on algorithms but actually becomes smarter as you - converse.

We partnered with SPACE10 and IKEA to test the format of conversation as an internal sharing tool for employees around the globe. Borrowing from the conversational format we know from messaging apps, Hej makes it easy to access and share information within IKEA. It keeps you in the loop of all happenings, and it allows experiments with new story formats such as augmented reality.

Other than creating a sense of belonging across countries, Hej also shows promise of an entirely new relationship between organisation and employee; one that is less corporate and more human.

Project information