Team spirit when IKEA and adidas get ready for home visits
When do you find the time to exercise? In the basement while waiting for the washing machine cycle to finish or with your kids in the living room? We all want to work out but can’t always find a way to make it work. IKEA and adidas visit women’s homes to explore the connection between living spaces and sport to help create healthy habits.
We know that exercising at home sometimes is your only option when you live with a busy schedule, your gym budget is limited, or you just need the privacy. At the same time urban populations are rising, living spaces are shrinking and your space is limited.
The home is a place where habits are formed. It is a constant in our lives. That is why design teams from both IKEA and adidas have teamed up to exchange knowledge and insight, and together explore the connections between living spaces and wellbeing to imagine the future of exercise in the home. To picture the future, you first need to look at the present. In the first stage of the project mothers and teens in different countries will open their doors to the teams. The goal is to understand what wellness means to them, and what role their living spaces play in this.
“We want to look at the whole – how we move, how we sleep, how we eat. It’s all connected and we believe that a better home can create a better everyday life that is more active and healthy,” says James Futcher, creative leader at IKEA.
You are visiting homes in Shanghai, London and New York. What do you hope to learn?
“We live multifunctional lives and our homes are increasingly a place where we exercise, but many homes today are not designed for that. During the home visits we hope to learn more both about motivational barriers like habits, time and knowledge but also about all the practical things that usually stand in the way – like storage and hygiene,” says James.
The partnership between IKEA and adidas, announced at IKEA’s Democratic Design Days last year, is a design research project with two players who both believe in collaborations and an open source approach to innovation.
“Our goal is to make sport more accessible for everyone. Working with IKEA we will be visiting the homes of young women (teens) and women with families to understand the barriers they face to fitness. From this research, in partnership with IKEA, we hope to create solutions that will enable more women to embed activity into their everyday lives,” says Josefine Aberg, Vice President of Design, adidas Training.
The question is how IKEA and adidas, together, can help people create healthier lives. The teams will find out by doing home visits in London, New York and Shanghai.