Let’s get Kreativ
When setting off on this project, I quickly discovered the app formerly known as IKEA Place no longer existed and now is housed within the main IKEA app. Brian Totty, CEO and Founder of Geomagical Labs, the person tasked with leading the effort shared,
“We’re working hard to help people imagine a better life at home, by fusing real technology advancements with fun and magical user experiences. We are super excited to share our first products and look forward to making these capabilities even more helpful and awesome in the years to come.”
I was drawn to this software as someone who’s brain is extremely spacial. The tool seemed genuinely fun for me, a self-proclaimed furniture junkie. And while I certainly stock my home with vintage and thrifted pieces, I definitely am the proud owner of a few IKEA fixtures. I love Scandinavian interior design. So this choice just made sense!
I was excited to try it out, and after going through the initial dance of tracking down the tool (I had initially searched IKEA Place in the App Store), I found her! Several additional barriers presented themselves after enabling the app access to my camera. I had to go through the rigamarole of resetting my IKEA account password (using the tool requires a log in), and most unfortunately, I had to wait eight whole minutes before my scan has uploaded to the software and I could start my design. That is 480 seconds worth of opportunities for me to completely abandon ship, as a user. Luckily, for IKEA, this was a homework assignment, and so I multitasked with those eight minutes the app had gifted me.
When I remembered I was in the middle of a task (got super distracted by my falafel lunch), I navigated back to Kreativ and started to play! Overall, the experience of setting up a space (you are limited to the furniture based on room tags: living room, dining room, bedroom, etc.), was intuitive although some of the larger pieces like couches and chairs did not interact well with my scanned space. I did like the feature it offered to remove unwanted visual noise from your space, in my case it was random boxes and classroom clutter.
Once I finished my space and saved the design, the app obviously tallied up the total cost for all the items I had selected so if I had wanted to make an in-app purchase, I could have. As a spacial person, I likely wouldn’t use this app feature as I can generally do all that in my own brain. I could see how it would be very helpful to folks who don’t have that skill, or who just want to zone out and relax by decorating fictional and real spaces.
