Frida Irina stenlund
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Frida Irina stenlund
 

WHERE DO YOU SPEND THE MOST ENERGY AT HOME?

IKEA Energy Insights: Using Behavioral Design to help people to lower their energy costs, and live sustainably

As part of IKEA’s mission to make sustainable living accessible, we identified an opportunity: helping people better understand + manage their home energy consumption.

As a UX Designer, my role was to bring users closer their energy, helping them decipher their electricity bills and make informed choices—all while integrating a new audience, the IKEA customer, into what was previously a tech-centric app, full of control, but no digital service that truly engages user.

The business goal (also shaped with user insights) was to provide user’s actionable insights on energy usage, integrate energy services into the IKEA Home Smart ecosystem, and create a new revenue stream by leveraging IKEA’s product range.

Screens from our IKEA Home smart app, live on App store. The data is reflecting the energy data from your household. User logs in with IKEA Family.

I played a strategic UX role in this project, leading a lot of the research, UX/UI design, and business alignment efforts to create impactful solutions, for example bringing three development teams together with design - and guiding teams to focus more on core user needs of the IKEA shopper as target group.

This project focused on long-term engagement around energy. The goal was to ensure that digital solutions not only provide information but also actively support users in making meaningful changes over time.

The result? We hope with the future users will manage their electricity agreements seamlessly alongside other smart products at home—bringing greater transparency, efficiency, and convenience to everyday life, all from a single, trusted platform.

 

🔗 Find the published Energy pages on IKEA web here. Link

BUSINESS OUTCOME

My UX contribution made our MOU (Monthly Active User’s) open rate go up by 50%, due to close iteration with user’s to meet their needs.

TEAM (IKEA HOME SMART)

Digital product owners, Architects, Designers, Developers, Researchers, Data scientists, Mechanical engineers, Industrial designers, Business Navigators at IKEA Home smart pshyical and digital range

SKILLS

UX Research, Strategy - Metrics & KPI setting, Sustainability, Prototyping, Agile process, Stakeholder Management, Journey Mapping, Storytelling.

ROLE

UX Design & Strategy 2024-2025

Insights - Energy ⬇️

 

The Challenges

IKEA wanted to extend its Home Smart app into a broader energy / home management tool. However, we faced several key challenges:

  • Many households already used energy apps, making differentiation critical. Energy apps are many, market and features are saturated. The need of personalisation was high on demand.

  • IKEA’s core customers were not traditional energy tech adopters (e.g., Tibber users) but rather everyday people struggling to understand and reduce their energy bills. Theser users at the IKEA store has intention to pick up candles and some flower pots, but absolutely with no intention to download an energy app?

  • The complexity of aligning multiple stakeholders across multiple business stakeholders within IKEA and third-party provider.

  • As UX designer, I had to balance business goals with customer needs— support sustainable behavior while ensuring transparency and trust.

Hypothesis ⬇️

Based on research, we started ideating and testing beneath two different hypotheises.

✅Hypothesis 1: User’s will engage more with the app if we can help them take action

✅Hypothesis 2: User’s will engage more if we give them personalised insights about their home

Research - Data driven vs Action driven user’s

User Insights: We found in interviews that user’s were divided into Data - driven vs Action - driven behaviors. By highlighting the two groups and their needs, it was clear that the app needed to cate to both need’s - for example both graphs, and easy tips and lifestyle products, co-existing.

Design Approach -Working in iterative loops ⬇️

New visual design:

  • Designed a clean, visually engaging, and intuitive interface based on Pinterest’s design system, also a life/inspiration platform just as IKEA, focused on simplicity and visual inspiration.

    User Engagement

    • Gamified Energy-Saving: Created an interactive, gamified experience for tasks like defrosting fridges and lowering thermostat settings, turning everyday actions into achievable challenges.

    Product Integration

    • Localization & Copywriting: Guided content writers in localization and copywriting, ensuring alignment with business goals and user needs.

    UX Research

    • Research Leadership: Led research efforts, including store tests, interviews, and remote testing using LookBack and UserZoom. User Testing: We conducted several rounds of user testing using Userzoom to validate our concepts. This allowed us to collect data on user behavior and preferences. In addition, we used automated surveys and quick screens to gather real-time feedback from target groups.

    Stakeholder Alignment

    • Cross-Team Collaboration: Acted as a bridge between business owners, development teams, and product owners, aligning teams around user insights.

    Goal Setting & KPIs

    • Metrics & KPIs: Supported the digital leader in establishing goals and KPIs for the project, and prioritising the epics and features based on insights. Unfortunately some Analytics were missing, but tried to mitigate it with constant user testing and back-tracking data.

    User Insights - guiding the team further ⬇️

Customer Days: We hosted customer days where I printed screens and made it easy for homeowners to comment directly on elements they liked or disliked. Making things physical in front of the user’s enables them to relate more and give more direct feedback.

We also used UserZoom where we got automated insights on quantitative numbers.

This hands-on approach provided valuable insights and allowed us to refine the design based on real user feedback.

The insights above where presented to development team and business leaders. User’s are looking for simple metrics. Many people are using energy apps such as Tibber, but find graphs and numbers to be too complex. At IKEA, we are trying to reach a novice - non techy sort of user. User’s today can navigate to a second energy tab inside the Home smart app, and the user’s requested to connect energy in the app with smart home products.

 

Final Impact - IKEA Energy manager personalised for your home ⬇️

Including: Your households energy consumption, temperature graphs, price graphs, Similar homes comparison, Personalised tips, Product recommendations and Shopping possibilities, Notifications, and Insights features - estimated release in 2025.

Each personalised tip with facts on energy saving, which can be saved for later, and includes a link to an IKEA product you can purchase online or at the store. I researched competitor apps, focusing on those with similar target groups as IKEA, such as Pinterest. This helped us identify user needs and preferences related to home inspiration and energy savings.

I designed the interaction to “save” or “pin” the personalised tips, I guided content writers on filter and copy concepts in general.

We introduced personalized product recommendations and created a new online business stream for IKEA — by connecting relevant products directly beneath each tip or piece of advice, effectively turning inspiration into a seamless path to purchase.

When testing this with users, we were positively surprised by their reactions. Instead of perceiving it as overly commercial, users expressed strong trust in the IKEA brand. They appreciated seeing product suggestions integrated naturally within a "life at home" advice context — saying it felt helpful, relevant, and true to how they already experience IKEA in the physical store.

Some snapshots - Live on IKEA here and in Google Play/Appstore

I made the strategic choice to mimic Pinterest in the energy app, as research shows that the target group for Pinterest is roughly the same age/gender/location as for IKEA. The energy saving tips are personalised for your specific living situation.

Comparing your household energy consumption with other similar household (based on your size, heating system, number of people) etc. showed to be an appreciated feature.

In this project I learned a lot about UI components for graphs and how to visualise spendings in currencies, price and kWh over time, compared to last month, as well how to work with data driven insights - such as what to visualise to give user the best possible impact.

Setting the washing machine when price is low, compare to similar households, view consumption

Key outcomes

Key outcomes of this Pilot for IKEA Swedish market:

  • Increased app engagement among non-tech-savvy users . 50% more open rate, according to third party provider.

  • Improved trust in IKEA as a sustainability partner

  • Strengthened cross-team collaboration, setting a foundation for future energy-related services. Set a new way to sell products that user’s have a true need for - such as solar panels, heat pumps and more.

  • Established a structured analytics framework to track the success of each feature, ensuring continuous improvement and data-driven decision-making.

Reflections & Learnings ⬇️

The final design featured a clean, interactive interface with gamified elements that encouraged users to complete energy-saving tasks. The integration of IKEA’s product recommendations alongside the tips provided users with a seamless experience, where they could easily take action and purchase relevant items to support their energy-saving efforts

  • Designing for behavior change requires emotional engagement. IKEA’s brand power helped us connect energy insights with meaningful actions in daily life.

  • Stakeholder alignment is key in complex projects. Regular synthesis updates and shared user research helped keep all teams aligned.

  • UX needs to balance business and user needs. The feature successfully leveraged IKEA’s product range while maintaining user trust by offering genuinely helpful recommendations.

  • A clear focus on KPIs and analytics improves long-term success. By embedding metrics early in the process, we ensured that design decisions were validated with real user data, enabling ongoing refinements and proving impact to stakeholders.

This project exemplifies how UX can drive both business and user value in a multi-stakeholder environment. By putting user needs at the center and leveraging IKEA’s ecosystem, we transformed energy insights from complex data into actionable, everyday improvements for the many people. The pilot is only for Swedish market and is still running, and ongoing analysis on the success of the project is ongoing.