Good mornings

12 Jun 2014 2min read

In contrast to the glossily produced interiors that feature in IKEA stores and brochures, this project from the same company shows the gritty reality of mornings in homes across the globe.

Unfortunately it doesn’t cover many of the health behaviours that we’d be interested in – like health monitoring and drug delivery – but it does give us a glimpse into places where those behaviours take place: bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchens.

IKEA shy away from interpreting the data for us; but I’m sure they’ve done that in private, this must be enormously stimulating for their furniture designers. They just present the data and the photos and in so doing I think they do a really helpful thing. We get to see, peruse and speculate, we get a little more contextual information to guide our design work and broaden out the design research we do for clients.

But it’s a shame that a smart pharma company hasn’t partnered with them. I think there’s a lot to be explored in the interaction of homes, furniture and health, a lot of unmet need and insights into how and when mistakes happen and what drives compliance.

IKEA plan further studies looking at different parts of the day. It’ll be worth keeping a watch on this.