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The problem with experience design is that once you see it you can’t unsee it, you will start to look at your every experience be it in the nano or right through to the Macro. You will often hear me mention that learning experience design is a made-up title… for the record I still believe this as all we can really do is create the environment for experiences. The output of that experience is a very personal one… so to say we create learning experiences is like saying we can make someone learn. Here is a great example, I will leave it to you to decide if this is a learning experience or just a great experience with one of the potential outputs to be learning This company is one I think really grasps experience design, from their meatballs right through to their flat packs and stores… that’s right you guessed it Ikea A good while back now they, along with the help of Anthony Chelvanathan and the team from Leo Burnett Toronto Group, came up with a great example of experience design with their campaign “Cook This Page”
IKEA and the clever noggins at Leo Burnett understood that in order for their actors (people/customers) to buy awesome kitchenware they had to breakdown the notion of cooking being only for the very skilled.
The Challenge
Ikea, from what I understand, had three key challenges to overcome they were:
Challenge 1 - Make cooking feel inclusive and not exclusive
Challenge 2 - Continue with the Ikea way of design – simple, modern and easy
Challenge 3 - Raise awareness of Ikea’s kitchenware products and Ikeas food.
What they came up with was the cook this page campaign… In a nutshell, they simplified four key recipes, these were Salmon with Lemon and Dill, Meatballs with Ravioli, Shrimp with Olives and Rhubarb Raspberry Crumble. They covered these recipes into a great example of a nano experience
If we are not careful we could easily overlook the amount of detail that has been layered on top of each other to pull this off.
The Design
I am pretty sure that finding a printing company to produce this must have been tricky, given that the ink first has to be put onto Parchment paper, then getting sign off from FDA* to make sure that the paper wasn't a fire hazard and that the ink would not contaminate the food it was wrapped around.*It was created in Canada so am assuming they had to get approval from them Smell
The stores were doing live cooking with the ingredients, the smells in the air must have been not only enticing to peak your curiosity but also make you feel hungry to then go off and buy some of their world famous meatballs at the restaurant
Illustration & Mastery
Not only getting the illustration to be of scale but also to make them easy and clear to follow, without any overload on the mind to cause confusion and in a really simply hashtag for that social share element of #easypeasy. I also assume there were many failed attempts at this in order to get the perfect recipe so that anyone could do it but to also make it tasty with only a handful of ingredients is a challenge…
In Summary This campaign went on to win a Gold Lion in the Outdoor category at the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity, quite rightfully. However, it is also key to remember that experience design isn’t just a big grand moment, sometimes it is just simplifying the complex, removing the friction and seeing things through the actor's eyes.
Original post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cook-page-experience-design-danny-seals/