Designing Behaviour

Inside IKEA’s Genius

You either love IKEA or you don’t. Personally, I'm not really their target market but one thing I can't ignore is the absolute genius of their design. Some find the maze exhilarating, others well it's just down right frustrating. Some trust the brand deeply, others tolerate it as a trip that needs to be taken when we shift homes. And that is precisely the point, IKEA is not nor has it ever been neutral. It is a brand that evokes feeling, love, dislike, trust, frustration but never indifference. And that polarity is super intentional. The mechanics of their business that irritate some are the same ones that shift others from like to love. It's proof that a strong brand is one that isn't designed to please everyone, but to resonate so deeply with their target market that it almost becomes part of their lives. Working with so many brands and even the years across adidas, Nike and sneakerboy were not just successful because of the clarity in who we were for but more importantly because it provided me the clarity in knowing who we weren't for.

When you step inside a brand like IKEA you aren't just walking into a furniture store. You are entering one of the greatest behavioural and emotionally design laboratories in the world, a space where psychology, architecture, and retail strategy all collide in such a clever way. Every detail, from the path you take to the meal you eat at the end, has been thought through with precision, clarity and absolute intent. It is not by accident that you stay longer, see more, and that  somehow we seem to leave with more than we planned. IKEA’s genius lies in how it designs the full human emotional journey and not just functional.

The Maze That Guides the Body

IKEA’s most famous mechanic is its maze-like layout. You know, the one-way system that seems to frustrate the hell out of some shoppers who wish they could dart in and out more quickly. Yet the numbers prove its brilliance. By guiding the body through a carefully choreographed path, IKEA extends exposure and obviously deepens our time in the store. You don’t have the choice to simply browse, you must take a journey. Along the way you encounter entire rooms constructed to spark imagination and mental ownership, a perfectly arranged kitchen, a compact but functional studio apartment, a dining room that feels like it belongs to a family you might know or want to be. These staged environments allow us to project our own life into the furniture, making the experience both practical and very subtly emotional.

Anchoring and the Dance of Prices

Another clever move is anchoring, the psychological principle that the first price you see sets the tone for everything else that follows. IKEA knows this very well. A sofa priced at $799 greets you early on in the journey and by the time you encounter a lamp for $29, it feels like an amazing steal, even when you never intended to buy one. This dance of high and low anchors frames value and that's not through logic, but through comparison, making sure that customers walk away believing they have found bargains and amazing deals.

Time That Disappears

One of the more subtle design choices IKEA makes is removing clocks and minimising windows. It's something a lot of casinos implement to help us lose track of time. Without having any external time cues, we actually start to lose track of how long they have been walking. What might feel like thirty minutes is often closer to two hours. Now, rather than instantly interpreting this as manipulation, it is better understood as IKEA creating a bubble and a temporary world of possibility where browsing becomes discovery and discovery becomes purchase.

The IKEA Effect: Value Through Effort

We all know IKEA’s flat-pack furniture, to the point it's almost iconic, not just for its efficiency in transport and storage, but for what it does to the human brain. Psychologists even call this the IKEA Effect. It's a simple equation really, when you build something yourself, you always value it more. It’s that sense of pride and ownership that extends far beyond the object to the brand itself. The hours spent assembling a bedframe are frustrating at the moment, we are always left with that one screw or piece at the end, but the attachment that follows is real. It transforms furniture into a sense of personal achievement. It anchors you into reward with a feeling of winning or progress, simple but super powerful.

Food as a Strategic Lever

Even the food court is super intentional. Cheap hotdogs and meatballs are not about margin, they again are about memory. They keep people in the store longer, soften fatigue, and create an anchor of delight at the end of what could otherwise be an exhausting trek. A lot of retailers overlook this lesson, but a low-margin “delight” can unlock a high-margin cart value simply by addressing basic human needs of hunger and rest. By having this in IKEA’s mix it extends energy and increases sales.

More Than Shopping: A Ritual of Belonging

For many families, IKEA is more than just a store, it's a bit of a ritual. A Saturday or Sunday spent wandering the aisles, sharing a meal in the food court, and hauling flat-packs into the car is as much about togetherness as it is about furniture. The building of furniture at home becomes a shared story, although sometimes frustrating, often funny, but always memorable. It's because of these things IKEA’s not just designing products, they are designing moments of belonging that people will carry with them and even talk about in years to come.

Global Consistency, Local Nuance

Part of IKEA’s overall strength lies in its consistency. All their stores look and feel the same whether you are in Sydney, Stockholm, or Shanghai. That's just so it makes it really predictable and what that does is it builds trust. At the same time though, IKEA layers in local adaptations like menu items to reflect cultural tastes, room layouts sized for local living. It is a masterclass in balancing global coherence with local relevance, a lesson we executed many times over at Nike and it always worked so well.

Playfulness and Delight

Beyond functionality, IKEA always embraces play by making up quirky product names like the tiny pencils and paper measuring tapes or the staged rooms that feel like theatre sets. None of these are accidents but subtle moves or acts of delight that remind us that shopping can be exploration and not just transaction. Even with those frustrations some have, like following arrows through a maze, they all create stories to tell. Playfulness is part of the brand’s glue.

Extending the Design Online

IKEA’s behavioural mechanics used in their stores are not just confined to physical space. Online, the very same principles apply. Anchoring is always at work in the way product pages show higher-priced items first, the checkout process has been simplified to minimise “nociception”. that’s the digital pain we feel like with those long forms or broken links. Augmented reality apps help you to place furniture in your living room, continuing the ritual of projection and perceived ownership that begins in the store’s staged rooms. IKEA has very clearly understood that the digital layer must carry exactly the same intentionality as the physical one.

Sustainability is Ideology

No analysis of IKEA is complete without acknowledging its sustainability narrative. Flat-pack shipping reduces carbon footprint. Materials are increasingly recycled or renewable. Circular design initiatives encourage customers to return, repair, or repurpose items. But let's get it clear these aren't just CSR window dressing, it is sharing their ideology and one of the most powerful tools to build customer allegiance and trust. It appeals to a generation of customers who want their consumption to align with their values, beliefs, and it's a sure way to deepen the brand’s long-term relevance.

The Four Levers of Motivation: R.I.C.E. in Action

What makes IKEA extraordinary is that it quietly activates all four drivers of human behaviour which may I add is super hard to achieve. Most retailers lean into one or two, sometimes three and some get these motivations confused and therefore change what they should be. 

Reward – the thrill of bargains, the satisfaction of walking away with way more than you paid for but deeper is the sense of achievement, progress in life and winning.

Ideology – the Scandinavian ethos of simplicity, functionality, and sustainability, this gives customers the sense they are part of something much bigger than the brand.

Coercion – the maze that forces exposure, the hidden shortcuts known only to insiders, the subtle stretching of time that keeps you present longer than you expect. Maybe not always enjoyable for all but still very clever.

Ego – the pride that comes with the IKEA Effect, the ability to say “I built this,” and the self-expression of designing your home, office or having something that aligns to your identity.

There's very few retailers that work all four levers at once and IKEA does it almost effortlessly, not because it manipulates, but because it designs with absolute intent, clarity first on brand and then lean into it through every aspect of their ecosystem.

So what's the lesson here?

The brilliance of IKEA lies in its refusal to leave the human experience to chance. It designs with psychology at the centre, understanding that behaviour is shaped not just by products but by layout, cues, and the body’s own rhythms. This is not there to try to trick anyone, it is intentionality. And that intentionality has created one of the most recognisable and successful retail models on our planet. They know the culture internally they what to have and that only flows through to adding to the experience of customers

Yet here is the contrast we see so much, those retailers who seem to do the opposite. They leave customer flow to improvisation, allow signage to be inconsistent, ignore simple sensory realities, and wonder why people leave quickly or fail to convert. Mediocrity in design leads to mediocrity in result. Looking closer at a business like IKEA, by comparison, reminds us that every decision matters, from the height of a shelf to the placement of a hotdog stand.

Beyond the Five Senses

In an earlier IGU Global article, Designing for the Full Human Experience, I explored how our bodies do not stop at five senses. Proprioception, thermoception, nociception, interoception and these hidden senses that shape how we move, linger, and remember. When brands design with them in mind, experiences feel natural, trust builds, and loyalty follows. IKEA already demonstrates the power of design on behaviour. The next challenge for the industry is to bring the same cleverness to design for human flourishing. If there is one thing I have learnt and become an expert in is that emotional design is the foundation for what you build as a brand, the campaign you are running, the design and layout of your store, the words you use and the success or failure of your business.

Closing Reflection

IKEA shows us what is possible when we refuse to be casual about emotional experience. From the maze that extends our journey to the hotdog that restores our energy, from the ritual of building at home to the sustainability of materials, every mechanic is intentional, every touchpoint is designed. It is not afraid of polarity, not afraid that some will dislike what others love. At the end of the day it's that tension that really strengthens attachment for those who choose and align with it. The question for every other brand is really simple. Are you clear on who you are so you can design, act and influence the numbers with that same intent, not just to shape behaviour but to create memories, comfort, and belonging? I've said it many times, customers do not just shop with their eyes or wallets, they shop with their entire nervous system and most importantly with how they feel.