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ROLE
Design Researcher
TIME
November - December 2021
TEAM
Alessandra Diaz, Corey Baker, Jenna Wang
How can IKEA better serve the needs of parents who will become empty nesters soon?
We designed Omfahn, a package of add-on planks, pegs, and screws customized to turn a child’s old IKEA IDANÄS bed frame into a bookshelf so parents can repurpose the furniture they own while maintaining treasured memories from the kids' childhood.
We spent time with parents who are becoming empty nesters soon.
They were dealing with all these same feelings of fear and excitement and confusion, but instead of heading somewhere new for their next chapter, they stayed behind. We took our favorite clothes and maybe a stuffed animal, but they were left with all our old math homework, empty beds, and [other items].
One of the parents we spoke to, Greg, shared how surprised he was that his daughter brought her tattered dog plushie with her to college, given how embarrassing he thought that would be for her. But he was beaming with joy when sharing that she chose to bring it. Greg saw her choice to bring the plushie as a symbol that his daughter still values their relationship and her childhood-- even as she’s moving into adulthood.
After talking with Greg, instead of concentrating on how parents feel about their children’s actions, we decided to focus on what parents do with their children’s objects and how that can show how the parents feel.
One of the parents we spoke to, Greg, shared how surprised he was that his daughter brought her tattered dog plushie with her to college, given how embarrassing he thought that would be for her. But he was beaming with joy when sharing that she chose to bring it. Greg saw her choice to bring the plushie as a symbol that his daughter still values their relationship and her childhood-- even as she’s moving into adulthood.
Jim, another dad we interviewed, had a piano prominently displayed in his living room. I say displayed because no one had touched it in at least a decade. He shared that the only person who ever played it was his daughter, Caroline. Caroline took piano lessons when she was younger, until one day, she asked to quit. As time went by he realized that she had hated it the entire time. Even now, he walks past the piano every day and, as he told us, thinks: “Damn, she didn’t like that at all”. He says he’s been meaning to get rid of it, but it’s been there for years in spite of the multiple renovations in which they could have easily had it removed.
After speaking with these parents and touring their homes, we decided to put the childhood objects we saw into a framework centered around the actions parents took with them: whether they said they wanted to keep or get rid of them, and whether they currently display or hide them.
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The top left quadrant, trophies, is most obvious -- parents display objects they want to keep. The inverse, clutter, is also pretty expected.
But look where the piano fell, in heirlooms-- it’s an object the parents clearly expressed wanting to get rid of and yet takes center stage in their living room. The heirlooms quadrant holds items that the parents feel like they should cherish, yet don’t actually bring them value.
Mike’s paintings fell in the diagonal quadrant, they’re trinkets: objects that he clearly yearns to keep, but are hidden in the basement. Trinkets are sentimental items that parents keep despite the actual object being less meaningful. These two quadrants hold items that create a tension for the parents.
Now, their kids are getting ready to leave and parents have to start making decisions about where the items left behind will or will not live in their home.
Jim’s wife, Anne, said these decisions will be difficult because her kids’ “needs and concerns will still take up space” even after they move out.
For the first time in years, parents will have more freedom with what to do with the spaces that their children no longer occupy, and what memories are represented in their home. How do they turn a once shared space into one for themselves while honoring the memories it housed?
Right now, parents face a mostly binary decision with each item in their home: either keep it, or get rid of it, which can feel a bit extreme. In order to better understand, we created a hierarchy of needs.
From these needs, we developed the following design principles:
Empower parents to declutter or get rid of things to support parents’ newfound autonomy in their own home.
Utilize imagery or objects from childhood to encapsulate memories in a new product so that parents can cherish the memories they share with their children.
Give new functionality to old things to lessen the parent’s stress of deciding which of their child’s to throw away.
Our solution, Omfamn (“embrace” in Swedish), provides a middleground: a package of add-on planks, pegs, and screws customized to turn a child’s old IKEA IDANÄS bed frame into a bookshelf. It retains the original visual of the bed frame by stacking the headboard and footboard.
We’ll also allow parents to incorporate colors from their existing homes by scanning their walls or bedding to customize the colors of these add-ons.
Along with the add-ons, we will give parents the option to recycle the unused slats from the bed. With the new planks and screws, we’ll send a box for them to return the slats in. If they do choose to recycle, the parents will get a 10% IKEA coupon once the parts are received.
Omfamn empowers parents to change their home and items in it to reclaim their newfound autonomy and space.
By using a childhood bed frame and colors from the home before the children left, Omfamn utilizes physical representations of childhood to encapsulate memories in a new product so that parents can cherish the memories they shared with their children.
The new bookshelf gives additional functionality to an old item to lessen parents’ stress of deciding which of their child’s items to throw away. By doing so, we can move a child’s twin bed, which would normally occupy the heirlooms quadrant like the piano, into the trophies quadrant with other treasured and displayed items. Making it easy for parents to get rid of the additional slats adds purpose to decluttering as well.
Parents often feel like they need to, as Anne told us, have a “bedroom shrine” to their children -- Omfamn helps them resolve the many tensions around how to handle the items their children leave behind.
With Omfamn, parents will be able to embrace the old and the new.
While Omfamn was born out of the stories we heard from parents with children going to college, this concept of sustainable multi-stage, multi-use furniture addresses the needs of parents who are transitioning their homes throughout their children’s lives. When their kids move out is just one of the more intense transitions.
By focusing on this niche, IKEA can not only ensure that investments a parent makes in their children’s spaces are investments in their own, but also invest in their company's value of caring for people and the planet.