In this episode of The Product Experience, Hanneke Hoogewerf, Strategic Experience Designer at IKEA, discusses the intersection of experience design and product. She shares insights on how IKEA is navigating digital transformation, the role of emerging technologies like AR and AI, and the challenges of handing over projects to product teams.
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Episode transcript
Lily Smith: 0:00
Hello and welcome back to the Product Experience. This week, Hanneke Hoogewerf, Strategic Experience Designer at IKEA, shares how experience design works with product to ensure the best possible design. We touch on how to design for future technologies and how to make investment decisions on big bets. The Product Experience podcast is brought to you by Mind, the Product part of the Pendo family. Every week we talk to inspiring product people from around the globe.
Randy Silver : 0:32
Visit mindtheproductcom to catch up on past episodes and discover free resources to help you with your product practice. Learn about Mind, the Product's conferences and their great training opportunities.
Lily Smith: 0:45
Create a free account to get product inspiration delivered weekly to your inbox. Mind, the Product supports over 200 product type meetups from New York to Barcelona. There's probably one near you, hanukkah. Welcome to the Product Experience Podcast. Thank you, it's so lovely to meet you Likewise. So, before we get stuck into our topic today, it'd be great to hear a little bit about what you do and how you got into that space.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 1:16
Yeah, I'm a strategic experience designer at IKEA and sometimes referred to as business designer as well. We're still figuring it out a little bit. What do we do? It's basically all the way in the beginning of innovation where we really start exploring trends, business opportunities, to identify sometimes very fluffy spaces, and usually where I then come in is to really help translate that into aren't actually products yet, but really like value propositions, a bit of North Star vision articulations of what could the future look like and what could future experiences be. Quite often like feasibility or whether we could do it tomorrow is out of scope, but it's really meant to kind of make strategic decisions based on a business case and a sketched out future. If this could be something that, in this case, ikea could see themselves move into and expand their business. How do I get there?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 2:15
I studied industrial design engineering in TU Delft here in the Netherlands More very much product design, physical product design and then started my career at phillips and moved to what they call the business. So that's more. It's not a product owner, it's more a business owner. So making the business case, launching the product, physical product at that time still, and I think that kind of business savviness and understanding also a little bit how strategic decisions are made in bigger corporates, together with my design background of what is needed, what is a customer problem, how can we meet needs, that combination for me was really interesting and at that time moved to wasn't where before but at Philips they had a strategic design team, so started there, worked there for five years was super fun. And then IKEA decided to kind of follow that same structure of integrating design in strategic business decision making.
Lily Smith: 3:11
Yeah, it's really interesting. It's not a term or a business unit that I've heard of before.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 3:17
No, it's quite rare. I was also, quite when I started talking to IKEA, quite surprised to see another company with exactly that job description that I was doing and I mean I love it, it's for me, it's really my passion and I think the combination is super interesting. So it's very happy to see that IKEA decided to do a similar type of structure and test it out. But you don't see it a lot. No, that's true.
Lily Smith: 3:41
And is it different to innovation, or is it it feels like a more focused name for innovation?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 3:50
Yeah, I think it's a role within innovation. So quite often I think the design thinking methodologies that you quite often learn in design school also works internally. So, for example, a lot of the things that I do and did as a strategic designer is facilitate innovation workshops to really make sure that all the perspective, all the expertise from strategy, business, customer needs, disruptive trends are coming together. So quite often I think I'm almost a bit the glue as designers. Designers will also never own something or we don't make the end decisions, but we really help put everything on the table and are good at synthesizing information and making complex narratives very simple so that decisions can be made for innovation. So I would say it's more a role within innovation rather than it's something on its own.
Lily Smith: 4:41
Great. So how do you approach this? Like, how many projects or things do you have on your plate at one?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 4:49
time it depends a bit. It's quite often how I experience it, a bit of an internal consultancy base, so it's more a mindset that we bring to the table and sometimes you see, if you work with certain stakeholders for a while, you stick there. I see it a bit hoovering into. We quite often talk about creating value propositions. That could be one project, for example, to really solve for a specific question. Sometimes, for example, if we start a new business or a complete new direction, it really becomes a program where, if you grow a bit more senior, you're also scoping the work with the business stakeholders and having smaller teams work on on the design challenges below yeah, okay, so you're part of a kind of cross-functional team yeah, it's very much a horizontal functioning.
Lily Smith: 5:38
Yeah, yeah yeah, and representing design within that space yeah, and across physical and digital. Physical and digital yes, definitely. And how has that been? Because it must be quite a challenge.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 5:52
It's definitely a challenge and I think it's also an interesting period where IKEA's in the whole new group got started, because IKEA was, I think a lot of people know from the physical stores that you go to and you buy a flat pack and you bring it home and you assemble it home. So they really had something to catch up on and then decided to create this whole digital group that I'm part of now. Yeah, it's very much a combination, because I think you're working with a heritage and a brand image that I think almost everyone in this world knows very well, but how to translate that into digital channels as well? I think it's quite often a combination where there's added different touch points, not only store, website like, even be at home.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 6:32
We talked a lot about AR AI today. I think, as a design strategist, what is important to ensure consistency there is to really work with an experienced strategy, sometimes moving a bit into product strategy strategy we often support there as well, but it can be quite fluffy. But I think, if everything is still so to be defined and potentially so far out of the future, I think it's very important to put the end user, the people you design for, at the center of things and to really sharply articulate what is the impact in terms of the experience or what do we want to stand for as a company within this field. To really identify those principles and you need a bit of a good creative lead there but to be able to translate that fuzzy future vision that you have into very tangible examples in the day-to-day and you mentioned AR, augmented reality for everyone who isn't familiar with it, although I'm sure most are.
Lily Smith: 7:34
How do you so? I remember AR was like such a buzz about it when it was first introduced, but it still doesn't feel like it's really kind of evolved into like really great, you know human experiences.
Lily Smith: 7:50
So how do you sort of assess those emerging technologies like AR and go, okay, this is what we think the future of AR is going to look like, and so this is how we're going to build an experience, you know, involving that technology, or how we could adjust our experiences to take advantage of something like that, and I guess AI is another one that's very similar. Like you have to think five years ahead, 10 years ahead, to guess what that situation is going to be.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 8:22
Yeah, now, I'm quite fortunate to work at such a big company, because then you have a lot of expertise and, yeah, groups inside we have a very talented group of trend watchers and really looking at paradigm shifts in the world from any type of perspective social, economical, but also technology. Quite often you see some predicted disruptions there as well, and I think where I'm moving towards with this build is, in the end, you always design for people and problems are real and you can see a little bit. What are the bigger shifts coming in society, what are the challenges that we're facing? So, from that perspective, I think we're all humans and we can all reflect back on. What does it mean for me? What does it mean for the many people that Ikea designs for?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 9:07
At the same time, we also have a couple of very smart people in the team that I think have their dream jobs because they're literally just playing around with AR trying to build cool ideas for Ikea. I cannot go too much into detail, but we have an app called IKEA Creative, which basically allows people to scan their space and plot almost a bit like the Sims that you played back in the days your furniture in your space so you can see how it looks like. I mean, with the technologies that are coming, just by playing around and see what works and how does it work, you have a really fun sandbox for innovation to see how we can basically democratize interior design and help more people design their homes in a place that they feel at home yes, and how do you then?
Lily Smith: 9:55
you kind of mentioned at the beginning that you sort of take care of designing the experience kind of before it goes into, I guess like a BAU. You know, typical product, yeah, cycle, yeah. So how do you then like hand out, do you like?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 10:13
yeah the experience to a product team yeah, this is a very good question and I think sometimes, to be very honest, a bit the headache of my, my job at the moment. Yeah, so we just started three years ago hiring 800 people. So you see, sometimes also a bit like operational, how it works. They're silos. So I'm going to be honest, we hit our nose very hard to the wall the first time we bumped into this. It was really hard to hand over, I think.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 10:41
As we repeat the processes now, I think it really helps to have a bit of a zigzag move over where you involve product at some point. For example, we're now having a value proposition North Star but at some point we need to start looking at what we do tomorrow if we want to launch an MVP and what is maybe the subset of things that is not like future vision, north start but could look something like a product ambition for the near term future. So we've learned and we're now involving more people. So, again, a bit this co-create process where I think sometimes my role yes, friction is a bit with the product owner at that time, but I think it's a bit around Knowing each other, trusting each other's capabilities and also, from my perspective, making sure a product owner feels comfortable to take over quite a fuzzy strategic project still to translate it into really like a product roadmap et cetera.
Lily Smith: 11:38
Yeah, it's interesting because I was thinking I would love for someone to just hand me something and go. Here's all the insight here, yeah yeah, yeah here's our mission and, uh, you know what? What? The product vision and everything. But it sounds like you know. How do you know that it's ready to hand over? Like, how do you? Is it like a product market you've validated?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 12:02
or we have like, yeah, a process following exploration, cases and gates, usually more tested. On that. We identify the problem. So we do a lot of customer interviews. We sometimes already have bits and snippets and pieces.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 12:16
The other part is very much a business case. So in other words, is this a profitable or what is the revenue model behind this? And then quite often we start handing it over. So we need a product owner does not get a whole wrapped value proposition there, but it's more an opportunity, a first idea of what could be possible and I think, just staying there a little bit on the side to help answer questions or sometimes help develop things more. So, like story, I think from a business perspective and a company as IKEA, it needs to be a viable business case. You see that from the decision makers. Quite often that's the main proof point and the rest is in my experience, a bit organic. But I think there's always a baseline of narrative. We quite often make a video or a deck to explain and I think if you've done it more often, you quite know when you have a good story and you know a little bit which buttons to push. But I think the key decision is quite often numbers.
Lily Smith: 13:14
Yeah, so you're basically getting yourself to like a high confidence that the opportunity or the value proposition that you've created is ready to evolve.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 13:28
Yeah, exactly, I usually say that we are really helping to de-risk. The question is this an interesting direction to go into and invest in, to explore further? And there's always a bunch more questions 100%, and then the product team Super risky. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting.
Lily Smith: 13:47
And before you even get to that point, I guess I mean these sound like they're sort of big bets, potentially like moonshots, yeah definitely. So with those sort of big bets and moonshots like, how do you decide what to work on? Because obviously you know, in product management, with prioritization, yeah, there's usually some sort of steer from customer insight or you know the, the business objectives and things like that. But if it's higher level, yeah, and a bit more, it's a bit more fluffy. It definitely is yeah, must be much harder to prioritize as well.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 14:23
Yeah, it is, and I think it's quite often. If you bump into someone that's a bit skeptical about this field, of course, at some point you want to know it a hundred percent to really invest your money in it. But in order to innovate, at some point you need to decide to go into a certain direction. So I don't think it's possible to give a hundred percent security at the time we make decisions, but it also doesn't have to be, because I think innovation is also successful if we prove that a certain direction for a company is not the right one.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 14:54
So, we know early on, let's not invest in it. It's not going to work. So I think the majority of my job is really together with then more people that have a business background develop a business case in terms of what could be the potential value of that area. On the other hand, I think and that's my main responsibility is to really draft the story Is that new value space that we're adding to IKEA selling home furnishing? Does that make sense to the bigger vision of IKEA? Can we create a strong narrative around? If we go into, for example, ikea is now also going into energy that's already out. You can buy solar panels, heat pumps because it completes the home. It's the life at home that we complete. So I think, not only from a business, but also from an experience perspective, we could really draft that narrative around. Are we truly helping people to live their everyday life in a better manner? And then, yeah, knowing the details, you can really argument how it completes experiences. How is it? How is it a logic step towards that from more than human end?
Randy Silver : 16:10
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Lily Smith: 16:23
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Lily Smith: 17:03
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Hanneke Hoogewerf: 17:40
teams a lot. We have a super strong market intelligence team and that scouting team. Yeah, it can be multiple rigors. I mean, the lady from YouTube that was speaking here today also said let's be honest, sometimes you just have a CEO that says I saw this on the conference, that I wanted to see more. Sometimes it's also a matter of exploring it a bit deeper and really proving whether it's a good or not a good idea. But if you do it more the organic way, I think we have a lot of really talented and very well implemented market intelligence teams and also even maybe not even market intelligence for spotting bigger trends, housing crisis, inflation and translating back. What does that mean to our business and the many people? So I think it's very explorative. And then, next to that, if we talk about I'm thinking external, there's also a means to keep reinventing yourself to some extent, because IKES is such a well-known brand and I think it will stay there for a long time, but you can kind of fall into that Kodak trap at some point right so.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 18:42
I think it's always healthy to start, to keep on reinventing yourself and to get inspired. Maybe sometimes it is a trigger around AR or AI or what could it do for our business? We have these hackathons as well, so I think it's multiple triggers in a sense.
Lily Smith: 18:58
Nice yeah. So when you're assessing an idea or a concept or something I'm making lots of, assumptions about what this process looks like. But I'm assuming that at some point you know there's prototyping that comes from part of that and testing with real users. Yeah, like what's your sort of top tips for, I guess, creating and testing a successful prototype or not a successful prototype? Successfully testing a prototype?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 19:29
Yeah, very good question. I think we sometimes also end up lately in a discussion like what is a prototype? Because it happened to me that we just had a small concept which immediately got hard-coded and sent out, and then they're like, no, this was not what we wanted. So I think there's different means and I think, in my role as a strategic designer, there's a lot of influencing stakeholders to make decisions. So we sometimes even refer to presentations, super clear articulations. We sometimes make a very simple, clickable PDF app that stakeholders could click through to just get the imagination. So think internally, those are quite often a video, a little clickable UX. You just start imagining a little bit what the world looks like for internal.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 20:20
External because quite often when we start building prototypes, the product is by far not finished not at all and quite speculative. So, yeah, maybe that's not a prototype, but we usually start really validating pain points. You can do that qualitatively. You can do that with questionnaires. I remember, for example, in my Phillips times, when we were more looking for solution healthcare, just mirroring a physician for a day at an ER gives you 100,000 observations around what's happening, what's going wrong, what are the emotions of people. So I think, therefore, you narrow it more and more and I would always say back to how I started to keep it as simple as possible, because quite often it blows up and you will see especially well I can only speak from big organizations. But then you have a stakeholder that wants this and this and this and it becomes a monster. Clickable prototypes or sometimes even just a scenario where you sketch out a future situation and you have people respond to it, is already very helpful and that part of people responding to it like how do you make sure that you're getting that right?
Lily Smith: 21:36
because I imagine there's a lot in making sure that you're setting up the scenario in the right way and asking the right questions at the right points throughout that experience?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 21:47
Definitely, yeah, we have again the luxury that there is like very good design research team at IKEA as well, so really trained to interview people, and I think it really depends on what you're testing. If you're starting to validate whether you have a pain point that's actually existing, lose from whatever solution you're going to target. There are certain methodologies. It's the what they say, do and think type of thing you can poke at, because quite often if you ask someone a question, yeah, it's hard to see, but it's better sometimes in observing or following them for a while I think it's a lot in behaviors as well and then framing a really good design challenge out of that, like what is actually the problem we're solving for. So I would say, maybe be very careful with too quickly pushing a solution in people's face and really trying to understand what they really do feel and think by observing them or looking at their behaviors, lots of questioning.
Lily Smith: 22:47
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel like product managers are quite good at asking questions. Yeah, sometimes it's just to validate our own thinking. So it's that, you know, trying to maybe invalidate our thinking as well.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 22:59
Yeah, but I think that's sometimes the friction I have with my team and the other stakeholders as well. Yeah, no, yeah, but I think that's that's sometimes the friction I have with with my team and and the other stakeholders as well. I think at some point we're not doing a PhD or anything, right? Is you work at a commercial company that has their timelines as well, and it needs to be so. I think it's a bit the balance still, yeah, that maybe product owners are a bit stronger at is to at some point, say and now we need to make a decision. Yeah, we can sometimes dream and strategize, continue something we need to hurry, yeah, yeah actually that was something I was going to come back to.
Lily Smith: 23:31
So obviously, when you're working on projects like this, where you're trying to decide, you know whether it's something that you're going to invest in further. I saw I worked as head of innovation before- as well.
Randy Silver : 23:41
So I've done a little bit of this one.
Lily Smith: 23:42
Sometimes you don't get a clear like this is definitely a thing or this is definitely not a thing, and there's like a muddy sort of gray area and there's no clear sort of direction. What, what do you do? Have you experienced that, or was that just?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 23:57
me? Yeah, my first response would be definitely. Sometimes something just keeps on dragging and dragging and can have multiple reasons why you're not going into it, especially if you're in these bigger organizations for a longer period. I see like topics boomerang back in my face again every two years or so. I think it's it's really at innovation as well at some point it's actually happening. This week at Ikea, we have twice a year where we just look at all the innovation programs. You have a next amount of budget to invest. You prioritize so what?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 24:29
in that sense quite often projects get like parked at that point.
Lily Smith: 24:35
Do you think that is just like your business instinct? Or you know the, the collective business instinct of like? Okay, let's have a discussion about this. It's not a yes or a no, but how is everyone feeling about?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 24:48
it, yeah. And I think just look at the other opportunities as well and what budget you have to invest. I think if you have the luxury as a company to keep investing in innovation, I would say, do it. But I also understand at times where budgets are cut. Innovation is maybe not the first thing that people invest in. So I think it's a bit balancing, like what are your opportunities as a company?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 25:14
Yeah, I find the grey project a really hard one because usually at some point, if I don't see it, I more have the tendency to say pull me out, I tried everything, I'm not going to find it because you need to be quite creative, right. And if tendency to say pull me out, I tried everything, I'm not going to find it because you need to be quite creative, right. And if it starts to really, yeah, and I'm like maybe someone else can have a look at it with fresh eyes. So maybe this kind of muddy project, my feeling is a bit like at some point, you know, for your feeling, is this going to be something or not? Or do I still see opportunity in this or not?
Lily Smith: 25:38
so that's another interesting point, because I guess, when you're working on something, there must be certain projects where you're like this is going to be amazing.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 25:47
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm really behind it, definitely.
Lily Smith: 25:50
And then how do you, when you are doing that handover, which we've already said, is a bit tricky, but how do you kind of instill the love and the passion?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 25:58
Oh gosh, yeah, I've been there. And then I'm like, can I maybe become a product owner? Because I kind of like, oh, can I continue? Yeah, how do you still? Well, I think it's always a little bit around personal relationships. So if you get along with a product owner really well, it's easier, like if you're friendly, how you talk to each other, how you can find each other. I think it's also experience and trust in one another. So maybe knowing each other from work for knowing your capabilities, respecting each other's expertise Think more from my experience in Philips, for example.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 26:30
It's really when it was more a clinical space it can be quite you have to really have your experience and knowledge about certain clinical fields. So then you really see, you become a bit of a familiar face in, I'd say, an example, oncology or something. You need a bit of baseline content For IKEA, not to say it's super simple. Everything but home furnishing is a bit more easier to understand for everyone what it is and how you design for that. So yeah, let it go. I mean I'm not a product owner, so at some point people could do it better than I do. And then it's on to the next Nice goal. I mean I'm not a product owner. So at some point people could do better than I do.
Lily Smith: 27:03
And then it's on to the next nice, yeah, so you have to let your babies go and flourish.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 27:08
Or sometimes you look at what's then the next horizon of this and then you go back. Yeah, yeah.
Lily Smith: 27:12
So IKEA is kind of, you know so well known for its design aesthetic. You know the branding, the products, the website, everything is so sort of Ikea, yeah, yeah. What's it like working in a design team with such a strong design identity?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 27:31
yeah, it's a very interesting challenge going to Ikea digital in the sense that it's such a well-known brand. It's quite often people ask, like, where do you work Ikea? Oh God, I love it. So they really did that well. So you inherit a brand image that is very, very strong. They also have a lot of guidelines. They really try to protect the brand, so they're very careful with that. So in that sense, it's quite clear.
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 27:55
But when we talk about physical versus digital, there's a real challenge in how do we translate that IKEA experience that brings a lot of joy and playfulness to an online environment, even beyond websites. How does that translate across different touch points? And that's a bit of an ongoing field. So it was quite funny in the beginning and still, to be honest, when we kicked off with this group quite often got the feedback when we presented future concepts like I miss the Ikeanus, what's the Ikeanus in this? I just went back thinking, thinking and there's obviously I think the answer is it's boring, it doesn't look. There is something joyful and playful and I think there's still a lot to discover. Yeah, and maybe also it sounds a bit boring, but maybe to standardize a little bit to make sure that we really translate that consistent customer experience in other touch points and outside of the stores of IKEA today as well.
Lily Smith: 28:57
When you're testing concepts, do you always brand them as IKEA when you're presenting them to potential?
Hanneke Hoogewerf: 29:04
customers, yeah, to customers sometimes not, because it depends. I think, as we're also exploring to extend into new businesses, it means we sometimes go via partners. Yeah, then we really have to align with brand what we're allowed to do and what not can be a white label sometimes, so, or we use the label from our partner. Quite often, if I present internally, I make it an Ikea experience, but, um, yeah, and that really depends on where are we moving into and who's our partner.
Lily Smith: 29:35
Hanneke, yeah, thank you so much for joining us. It's been so nice hearing about your experience and, um, yeah, thanks for having me in strategic design yeah, it's very exciting and, yeah, thank you for sharing all of your insights super thanks for having me great the product experience. Hosts are me lily, sm host by night and chief product officer by day.
Randy Silver : 30:08
And me Randy Silver also host by night, and I spend my days working with product and leadership teams, helping their teams to do amazing work.
Lily Smith: 30:17
Luran Pratt is our producer and Luke Smith is our editor.
Randy Silver : 30:21
And our theme music is from product community legend Arnie Kittler's band Pow. Thanks to them for letting us use their track.
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