Designing Solutions
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It may not be noticed by everyone, but in recent years Ikea has been killing far fewer husbands. The company has accomplished this modest feat in large part through improving its product design. As much as it has doubled down on market research and logistics, Ikea has been relentless in its focus on design.
Engman, Ikea’s design manager, and his team come up with some 2,000 new products every year, including redesigns of existing items. Marianne and Knut Hagberg, a brother and sister design duo who have been with Ikea for 36 years, have redone one of their most successful products, a three-tiered mesh document tray, three times. “Everybody has it,” says Marianne. Each redesign resulted in a different shape of the support holding the trays—a horseshoe, a triangle, and a rectangle. Knut jokes that soon they’ll run out of shapes.