A hypothetical solution that leverages AI technology to help users resell old furniture via IKEA.
Linh Ly, Angela He, Kristina Moroz, Lillian Cheng, Milan La, Nyla Canete
However, users highlighted issues in the program, such as high interaction costs and inconsistencies, creating negative user journeys. As a result, customers lost trust in the program.The inconsistency of IKEA’s current buyback process coupled with customer dissatisfaction presented a clear opportunity to streamline the experience.
Through market research and user sentiment analysis (from Reddit), I learned that the program needed an update to make it faster and unambiguous. I felt that automating the process via AI would improve the program. Leveraging AI allows for faster item identification, condition vetting, and process automation; significantly reducing wait times.
Also, repositioning the program in IKEA’s IA would help create a more circular experience for users that remains consistent with IKEA’s business goals. These improvements would greatly improve customer perception of the product and encourage customers to participate in the buying and reselling of IKEA furniture.
Since this was a design challenge as part of a hackathon, my team and I did not have time to measure the impact of our design. However, if given the opportunity, I would measure feature adoption usage, customer life time value, and sales of As-Is items. These metrics can help use see if the updated process has lower churn rates and increased chances of IKEA customers using the buyback feature multiple times.
By 2030, IKEA wishes to reduce furniture waste throughout their entire production process by implementing a circular product model. As an effort to move toward that goal, the buyback program was created. The program would create a circular product loop where old products could be either refurbished, remanufactured, recycled, and resold by IKEA. However, it wasn't very successful.
The program has had a very low success rate. Approximately on 30% of IKEA customers are somewhat likely to use the new program. This means that there is a high possibility of IKEA items ending up in the trash. In IKEA's 2018 report to the World Economic Forum estimated that 13.5 million items could have been recycled. Additionally, in 2022, IKEA reported a loss of approximately $1.7 billion due to supply chain issues. Though these issues were created by the pandemic, they could have been fulfilled by old refurbished items.
I turned to Reddit to grasp user perception of the program. However, following up with user surveys and interviews about the functionality of the program would validate these insights across a wider audience.
Parsing through the reviews, I found three main pain points of the buyback experience: inconsistent experiences across geographic location, confusion about the eligibility of an item, and poor communication throughout the process. This ultimately led to frequent negative user journeys.
To better grasp why users were having negative journeys, I mapped out the user flow and noticed a lot of redundencies. The program had users navigate from the program information page, to a login page, and back to the program page. This increased interaction costs and created user friction. Additionally, the wording used throughout the program did not provide users with clear information about the next steps.
Together with my team, we came up with different ideas on how to tackle the problem. One of the first challenges was figuring out what platform we would work on. After deliberating, many of the members voted to prioritize the desktop experience. Since the decision was split, I and a few other teammates worked on the mobile app.
Updating the experience on IKEA's mobile app allowed us to take advantage of a phone's camera. This feature along with AI capabilities could help us design a solution that would expedite and streamline the buyback process. Although reducing the interaction costs in the buyback program was a goal, we needed to first make the program easy to find.
There were various things to consider when re-designing the buyback program, mainly time and resources. Because this product was an MVP feature, I prioritized solutions that would be easy and quick to implement.
Although my idea for the mobile app design was introduced as a feature in our team's final presentation, I still mapped out the entire experience on the app.
User sentiment analysis and flow mapping highlighted a confusing information architecture on IKEA's homepage.
The buyback program was hidden away in the Support and Services tab, making it difficult to find and creating unnecessary user friction.
Additionally, the sequential steps within the process were repetitive, creating too many interaction costs and increasing the likelihood of negative user experiences, resulting in high churn rates and low feature adoption. Since users need to sign-in to access the program, I positioned the buyback program within the user hub. This reduced interaction costs. With the addition of AI in the buyback process, the entire process was speedier and less tedious.
Although the prompt stated that our team should redesign the website, I began the redesign on IKEA's app. Research pointed to most users relying on the mobile app to engage with IKEA, ideating interior design choices and making purchases. I also wanted to merge AI technology with phone's camera to optimize the process. Users could now simply point their camera at the item and scan it. The AI feature would take care of the rest.
Borrowing from my mobile design, on the desktop design, I decided to integrate the AI feature into the already existing search bar. This opened up the ability to expedite the process of identification and vetting, which were necessary in the buyback process.
Additionally, many users complain about arriving at IKEA only to have their item returned because it was not eligible. Having an AI identify the item, verify its eligibility, and appraise the condition would automate the process and remove the ambiguity.
As the program currently is, the experience of selling back items and purchasing second-hand items feels disconnected, almost like two separate things. However, in connecting the experiences users could see the impact of their resales. In doing so, it may incentivize them to sell the item through IKEA and not through other marketplaces (like Facebook, Craigslist, etc).
The design challenge was exciting as it was my first time working with a team. In hindsight, it would have been good to test our designs and simplify our solutions. I think that in testing our designs early, we would been able to clearly measure which ideas worked and which did not.
Regarding my design, I believe it would have been a good solution, especially if implemented only on the mobile app. To measure the quality of the design success, I would have looked used feature adoption rate and time on task metrics to measure success. I also believe that online sales of As-Is items would be a good indicator of the redesign’s success.
The design challenge was exciting as it was my first time working with a team. In hindsight, it would have been good to test our designs and simplify our solutions. I think that in testing our designs early, we would been able to clearly measure which ideas worked and which did not.
Regarding my design, I believe it would have been a good solution, especially if implemented only on the mobile app. To measure the quality of the design success, I would have looked used feature adoption rate and time on task metrics to measure success. I also believe that online sales of As-Is items would be a good indicator of the redesign’s success.
