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“I think design and design thinking are needed more than ever in the world now,” Markus Engemann told me via video interview. “There have never been more problems to solve,” says the creative director at Ingka Group (also known as Ikea Retail), making it an exciting, if challenging, time to be a designer. Discovering what problems design can solve is the biggest challenge.
Engemann, who is one of the judges for the 2024 Design Innovation Awards, believes that product is not always the answer. He spent six years at IKEA as head of design before taking on the role of creative director. Although he is rooted in consumer design, he believes it has never been more important to exercise restraint when putting things out into the world. This tension is part of seismic change that he sees as the biggest challenge for designers in the coming years. In a conversation, Engemann talks about the rise of fast consumerism, the changing retail landscape, and how sustainability fuels everything he does at IKEA.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What problems do you think need more design now more than ever?
How to make sustainable living affordable so that people move towards sustainability is one of the biggest tasks we have. This is something we work on at IKEA every day. There are possibilities in production that will be interesting – in terms of where the raw materials come from and how we can reuse those raw materials.
Do you think the technology element is now more important than ever in terms of how we solve this problem?
All the big shifts in design have always come hand in hand with technological shifts, which is why I think this is so important. In my field – which is home furniture design or product design for homes – it has always been like this with big transformations.
I’ve always been really interested in production capabilities and production, and how you can tweak it, and how you can maybe go back to it to find something that works in a completely different field. Why can’t this work in our field and we get those advantages? But then, you have to be close to production.
What new technology has caught your attention in other areas that could be applied to IKEA?
I work in retail design now, and if you look at that, I think there’s a lot of what we’re experiencing that comes together from the gaming industry to make the store experience more interesting and more engaging.
When it comes to product design, what we are looking for are new materials and production techniques, which are faster, more efficient and perhaps not used in home furnishing today. I’ve always been a fan of looking at paper, for example. It’s a really interesting material that hasn’t been used to the extent it could be, if you ask me.
Sometimes it seems that the fastest and most efficient may not be the answer. I think about electric cars, and how we try to solve the problem of carbon dioxide production by manufacturing thousands and millions of new electric cars that come at a huge environmental cost. Maybe simply not making things is the solution. Do you think design can play a role here?
Yes, but I never saw design as a way to make things. I saw it as a way to approach and solve big problems. Sometimes you can do this by making products, but more often than not, you don’t. There could be other solutions.
exactly.
So, given what’s good, in the case of electric vehicles, maybe what we need to solve is mobility. Movement will not be less; Must be more. So how can you do it in a sustainable way? It is the same for the home furniture industry. Do we increase the number of seats or solve the seating? I’d rather look into how to deal with sitting in a better way for the future. This is the thing that needs to be solved. I think it’s also our duty as design leaders to always bring that kind of thinking because it’s not always the product that’s the solution.
Do you think that solving the problem of movement or, for example, the problem of sitting is possible? These are problems that reach society itself, not just the hands of designers.
Designers and our industry are a huge part of society. If we feel like we’re not, I think we won’t do a great job. Whose problems can we solve? I honestly think that a lot of the efforts in the design and innovation community are not serving many people. It’s just solving problems for the few who can afford it. This is not really a solution for the world.
I think we need to go to things that bring the potential for big change, so we can refocus our efforts on that rather than dwell on our accomplishments. We must go for something much broader in this approach.
Changing course, what is it about technology and design that interests you now?
It’s interesting that [think] The majority of resources in the future will be in major cities, if you talk about raw materials. The raw materials will be in waste, and the largest landfills will be in major cities. So how can we leverage this to produce products closer to where people actually live in the future? I think that’s interesting to explore – the commercial potential to do this – because that would be a huge game changer.
I think you’ll see big brands become much closer to people again. This is a big thing because it’s not just about the big brand. It’s about relevance and the potential to create relationships and be locally relevant. We already see that this will lead to a lot of big shifts in retail. You can’t introduce a concept and then it will change everything for people. It’s more about how to make London part of IKEA, rather than IKEA being part of London, if you see that brand as an example. I think this is an interesting task. That’s why I find it so exciting to work in retail design, because it’s a shift.
Everyone was talking about how retail was dead before the pandemic. During that period, people started shopping online, and now we are returning to retail, like a pendulum. Do you think people really want to have a local retail experience?
COVID-19 has made many retailers struggle but also rethink what’s important. Ultimately, it’s about relationships. People don’t like to be alone. In our work we can see that people who meet people actually come back again. Physically talking to people is a kind of hospitality experience.
I’ve always preached the importance of being a queer brand. I think this is important not only for IKEA, but in general. You must have a curious personality as a brand and as a person. This is attractive because it’s not just about yourself. It’s actually about your interest in [people] Who are you talking to? This is a good starting point for any type of relationship.
Was there anything that surprised you about people’s demands that you didn’t expect to happen?
I think the speed of change in the fashion industry has been surprising. Shane, for example, and what they did and how quickly that changed. This was something I really didn’t expect to happen Which fast. It’s the opposite of sustainability talk and thinking. He opposes what everyone feels is the future of the world.
I want to stick with what I just said. I see a huge disconnect between what some people believe is the path to a better world and what people actually want. People seem to care more about the shiny things and instant gratification, rather than the big picture and the distant problem. Do you think there is a disconnect between what people say and what they actually do and how can designers do to bridge this gap?
Of course we know there is a disconnect. But instead of thinking, no matter what I do, it’s not going to make a difference, I see it as a huge opportunity. How can you make people see more important things than the shiny things?
If we take the late Virgil Abloh’s IKEA collection as an example, it was about creating a new, young audience that understood the importance of… the house. So, then, how do we get audiences interested in things they don’t care about? I think this is something we must develop.
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