At the 2012 Barcelona Design Week, Professor Caroline Hummels of Industrial Design at TU/e and kitchen strategist Gerry Dufresne of IKEA made each other’s acquaintance. Their meeting resulted in a joint project of the furniture giant, the Designing Quality in Interaction group at Industrial Design, TU/e, and Lund University.

According to Jelle Stienstra, who’s coordinating the project in light of his PhD, IKEA is interested in the explicit link between design and technology at the Eindhoven department. “What appealed to the company is that we take an idea as a starting point for a design, rather than try to solve existing problems. Our designs are based on possibilities.”

The kitchen of the future: in short, that’s what students in Eindhoven and Lund were challenged to think about. “The assignment was to pretend you lived in 2025, and consider what behavior will be important then, what will have changed in the world, and what could be designed for that as far as kitchens are concerned”, Stienstra explains. Sustainability was one of the bullet points as well.

Close to thirty Eindhoven ID students (ranging from first-year students to graduates) started working for the IKEA project last September. The project yielded a wide range of concept and products, including new devices and complete kitchens equipped with all kinds of technological innovations.
Master students Vincent van Rheden, Vleer Doing, and Rob van Kasteren were invited by IKEA to present their designs in person, says Stienstra. “Most of the other projects were valuable as well, but could be realized within two or three years. These three actually thought future, something IKEA was looking for within the project.”

Last week, the ID students, Stienstra, and his colleague Bart Hengeveld visited IKEA Headquarters in Älmhult to present their concepts to managers, marketing managers, and designers with the company. “Very exciting”, Stienstra admits, “especially since we had to present our ideas using video. We had to leave our tangible prototypes behind in Eindhoven, because we couldn’t take them on the plane”.

According to the researcher, the videos managed to convey the use and experience of the designs well. He’s sure the Eindhoven presentations have stuck with IKEA. “I think ID at TU/e has an entirely different approach to design from Lund. The two perspectives were complementary. I think we made a very good impression, especially regarding integration of technology and design vision on interaction design.”

Stienstra says that IKEA will be developing their strategy for the future little by little. “We hope our collaboration will have an impact on it, only time will tell. The signals are promising.”
The ID researchers don’t rule out the possibility that at some point the furniture store will be selling products that originated at the TU/e. “One of the projects we’ve presented in Älmhult (that of Vincent van Rheden, ed.) isn’t a product design, but a new interaction method: one that makes us handle products differently from how we interact with them today, with more expression and emotion. IKEA thought that was very inspiring.”

What the TU/e showed the people in Sweden exactly, Stienstra can’t say. “IKEA owns the intellectual properties.” However the contract states that if an idea results into a product, the name of the student who designed it will be mentioned.
Hengeveld stresses: “Collaborating with a major client like this and the experience for our students have been immensely valuable, of course. And the three students who have come along have had a chance to present themselves most favorably.”

And Stienstra can tell us that IKEA intends to present the results from the joint research project with Eindhoven and Lund ‘at a major international event’. “That would be a wonderful opportunity for our department to consolidate its name in design research.”