Some assembly required: Enabling IKEA’s design system with infinite configurations

Coming Soon*

This case study explores how we expanded IKEA's design system to work across vastly different contexts—from utilitarian factory inventory interfaces to expressive marketing experiences, while maintaining accessibility and brand consistency for millions of users worldwide.

The Challenge

Design systems often optimize for one context. IKEA needed one system to serve everything—from dense, functional inventory tools used by warehouse staff to open, expressive marketing sites engaging customers worldwide.

I led discovery work to understand how the system could flex across this spectrum without breaking.

What I Explored

Utilitarian Contexts
Factory inventory interfaces, warehouse management tools, internal operations systems—dense, functional, efficiency-focused.

Core E-commerce
Shopping experiences, product browsing, checkout flows—the existing strength of the system.

Expressive Contexts
Marketing sites, brand campaigns, seasonal promotions—open, emotional, visually rich.

The question: How does one design system support all of these without becoming either too rigid or too loose?

Research

Before proposing solutions, I needed to understand the problem deeply.

Senior Stakeholder Interviews
Talked with leadership across product, engineering, operations, and marketing to understand strategic priorities, pain points, and business context for expanding the system's reach.

Customer Feedback Analysis
Reviewed customer feedback across e-commerce experiences to identify patterns in usability, accessibility, and brand perception that could inform system decisions.

Internal User Feedback
Dug into feedback from warehouse staff, operations teams, and other internal users of IKEA's utilitarian tools to understand their needs and frustrations.

International Team Workshops
Conducted workshops and interviews with designers and engineers across multiple countries to surface adoption challenges, context-specific needs, and implementation friction points.

Existing System Assessment
Analyzed the current design system's strengths in e-commerce and identified gaps when applied to contexts it wasn't designed for.

Discovery Focus Areas

Spectrum Mapping
Analyzed where different IKEA products sat on the utilitarian → expressive spectrum and what each context required from the system.

Component Flexibility
Explored how core components could adapt—same foundations, different expressions—without requiring custom rebuilds for every context.

Accessibility Across Contexts
Ensured accessibility standards worked consistently whether someone was using a warehouse scanner or browsing a marketing campaign on their phone.

Global Scale Considerations
Platform compatibility (web, iOS, Android, kiosk, emerging tech), internationalization, and performance across diverse environments and use cases.

Key Insights

Design tokens became critical
They allowed us to maintain consistency while giving each context the flexibility it needed.

Not everything needs the same level of expression
Warehouse tools don't need marketing polish. Marketing sites don't need utilitarian density. The system needed to support both—and everything in between.

Accessibility is non-negotiable across contexts
Whether someone is scanning inventory in a warehouse or browsing a sofa on their phone, accessibility standards remain the same.

Documentation must speak to different audiences
Factory interface designers have different needs than marketing site designers. The system needed to serve both.

Impact

This discovery work informed:

• Component flexibility strategies

• Design token architecture

• Documentation approaches for diverse use cases

• Accessibility standards that work across contexts

• Adoption frameworks for international teams

The system scaled to support millions of users across IKEA's entire digital ecosystem—from the most utilitarian internal tools to the most expressive customer-facing experiences.

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Full case study coming soon.
Detailed exploration of research methods, design decisions, and outcomes. In the meantime, have a look at some visuals.