IKEA laundromat
The goal of the project was defined at the beginning as combining a Customer Experience centric approach to branding, with a brand driven approach to Service Design and trying to link those two aspects into one Brand-based Service Concept. The aim was to integrate a Customer Experience-centric approach to branding, with a brand driven approach to service design and make this into a service.
Our workflow - the development of a customer experience based Service Concept for IKEA on the example of a laundromat - was pretty straight forward.
First we analyzed the existing process and customer journey of most of the existing laundries and tried to collect ideas on how to adapt the brand values of IKEA, as a caring, family friendly, welcoming and empowering character on to that process.
Obviously the most annoying part of the existing process is the waiting time. Also the atmosphere in laundries is not comfortable or inviting as IKEA it would like it to be. Another important aspect for us would be to make the customers feel empowered and make the place family friendly.
The work in the group was fine. Most of us were customers of IKEA since a long time so it was easy for us to get into the customers mindset. But having one person in the team that didn’t have any experience with IKEA also helped because therefore we had a point of view from an “outsider” and the thoughts and first impressions were not influenced by the experiences with the company over many years.