What Ikea stores could teach us about framing value

I have lived in Sweden for almost three years, so it feels like it's time to write something about one of the country’s most famous institutions.

Not ABBA (sadly), or midsummer, or Pippi Långstrump, or fika, but Ikea. The place where you go in for stackable food storage boxes (and, probably, meatballs), and somehow end up rethinking your entire living room.

What makes Ikea interesting, for this article at least, is not the furniture or the reasonable prices, it's the way they design their in-store experience to help people understand value - and I think there are a few stealable ideas here.

You're not pushed straight to the warehouse full of boxes (so many boxes), instead you are first guided through a sequence of rooms that show you how life could feel.

You aren't looking at a sofa, a storage unit, lighting, or a dining table in isolation, you are looking at possible future versions of your home. In this context Ikea is actually making that story do a lot of the work.

Their approach isn't perfect, there's the familiar (dreaded?) weekend experience of long queues and a slow, looping route that can really test your patience.

But the whole thing works because the showroom primes you. Once you have pictured your lovely newly configured room, the later search for the right desk, lamp or storage box feels focused and purposeful rather than random - the showroom provides the narrative layer that makes the later rows of (seemingly identical) brown boxes intelligible and meaningful.

This is a useful reminder for the cultural sector, because lots of cultural websites provide the equivalent of the warehouse first rather than the showroom.

Cultural organisations often talk about value as if it is self-evident - the work is excellent, the objects are important, the artists are world-class, the brand has heritage. But when you look at how people encounter that work online it becomes clear that digital journeys rarely help audiences see the value clearly in terms that might make sense to them.

Lessons from Ikea

Of course it is not always possible to draw direct parallels between a physical experience and a digital one, but I do think there are some ideas and principles worth reflecting on.

The first is that context makes value legible. Each Ikea showroom is arranged with a clear sense of use, atmosphere, and purpose. You can picture yourself in the room because it is designed to feel real.

Even if you would never lift all of the idea directly into your own home, the individual details still help you see what might be relevant or interesting to you. A colour palette, a layout, or a storage idea often becomes the thing you take away. That 'partial transfer' is the point, the context gives you enough information to decide what matters.

Cultural websites can do the same, to help people imagine or make the link to their experience rather than simply presenting the details. Without this, an event listing or website experience becomes the digital equivalent of a shelf of unrelated and incomprehensible boxes.

In user research I've been involved in on recent web projects, this issue has come up repeatedly. People aren't necessarily overwhelmed by how much stuff is on offer, instead they're overwhelmed by having to figure out what something even is before they can decide whether it's for them. Cultural websites too often leave that interpretive work to the audience, which increases uncertainty and effort. And increasing effort makes it more likely that people will simply give up.

The second idea is that narrative can help make choices simpler. Ikea does not give you a giant index of products at the start, there is no giant Argos catalogue. You are led through the kinds of spaces people might actually live in, your attention is guided by use rather than by individual product types.

Cultural websites often lead with categories or filters, which sometimes have their place but they don't really help people picture how an evening, a visit, or a day out might unfold, and they often use language that only makes sense to people who are 'in the know'. The showroom works because it leads you somewhere rather than handing you a product list, and even a light-touch version of something like that (a sense of where you're being taken, what you're being shown, and why), will give people less to have to understand and hold in their head at any one time.

So, a few questions to end with: Where does someone first encounter your programme or collection online, and what does that moment actually do for them? Is anything on your site doing the work of the Ikea showroom right now, i.e. giving people context before asking them to choose? And if someone comes to you completely cold, not knowing your artform or your organisation, does the way that you present things actually help them find their way in, or are you essentially inviting them to enter via the warehouse?

Alright, here's an ABBA video too: