Compare new home planner (top, right) to current (bottom, right) in rendering kitchen (left). Full size pictures after the jump.

An Interview with IKEA IT lead, Jesper M.

Jesper M., acting product owner for the new IKEA Home Planner software currently in development at IKEA in Helsingborg, Sweden, recently agreed to an exclusive interview for IKEAFANS.com about the new IKEA Home Planner software based on 20-20’s Virtual Planner technology – today we have more of that interview, in the form of a Q&A:

IKEAFANS: What advantages does this new planner possess that were not inherent to the original planner?

Jesper M.: It will be a platform that we feel we can expand upon much more than the old one. It’s online so this really makes it easier to update and keep track of. Cross platform, much nicer graphics; well let’s just say that we feel this could be a very good thing.

IKEAFANS: Is it kitchen only or can we add other things from the catalog (dining furniture, mirrors, and such)? Can you put a Billy bookcase in a kitchen?

J.M.: First version will only be kitchen. If [multiple room support] gets implemented you wouldn’t have any problems with that, however Billy is not in the first version. The future seems bright for many other things.

IKEAFANS: Can it do walls that are of varying height?

J.M.: Freestanding walls are possible. I’m guessing that [your question] is in regards to the outer walls however and these are not possible to do in varying heights. But there’s a possibility to use a wedge to create a leaning roof.

IKEAFANS: Will it allow odd shaped rooms? Can we do partial interior walls? (I see we can do openings, which is already a big improvement).

J.M.: There’s going to be a lot more you can do with your rooms, but it might not be in the first version. The possibilities are definitely there.

IKEAFANS: Can we do fractions of an inch this time?

J.M.: The version we have right now is only in metric so I can’t answer this at the moment. But I can say two things: The planner is using millimeters instead of centimeters as the old one did. And secondly, 20-20 is a Canadian company so it seems the chances are good for making this a reality.

IKEAFANS: Does it allow you to swap out a cabinet after you’ve placed it? Could you say, “How does it look with a glass door there?” and see it without tearing out the whole run and rebuilding it from scratch?

J.M.: There’s no swap function. But let me tell you that it’s a lot easier than the old Homeplanner! No more strange snap points that won’t let you have control of what you’re doing. It’s much more easy and intuitive to make it work.

IKEAFANS: What would be really cool would be if we could load our own surfaces and textures like tiles and countertops. Will this be possible?

J.M.: When it comes to new surfaces, well we might start expanding what’s in there. I don’t think you’ll be able to upload it, but who knows.

IKEAFANS: How long does it take to recover when you change something? Is there a long pause with each movement of a cabinet?

J.M.: We’re working hard on testing the planner and also the response times. Of course there will always be some delay, but we want it to be minimal.

IKEAFANS: Can we stack cabinets? Put in uppers after lowers are in place? Of course, I can see from the screenshots that Hadirajan can stack cabinets, but can mere mortals?

J.M.: Yes, this is very much improved in the new Homeplanner. No more workarounds or fixes [are required] for this.

IKEAFANS: Will [the new IKEA Home Planner] keep the pricing info as did IKEA’s original planner?

J.M.: We’re working hard on improving the way the prices are updated in the planner. We’re not there yet but our hope is to be able to have prices update as often as possible.

IKEAFANS: Will there be a tutorial?

J.M.: There’s a step by step flash that is going to help people in the store and probably online as well.

IKEAFANS: What are the biggest challenges faced by your team?

J.M.: I have to say making everybody happy :) A lot of people have a lot of feedback, ideas and so on and we really appreciate this but it’s very hard to do everything; hence choosing different things to do is always hard.

IKEAFANS: How can we best help to provide feedback and information for your development team? Does IKEA listen to IKEAFANS?

J.M.: Keep posting your thoughts on the [IKEAFANS Forums] of course. This is the main place where we try to help and seek feedback from customers. We already made two usability tests with the new planner and will perhaps do more in the future, so it’s good to know where we can find able testers that would want to participate.

Below you can see the difference between the current planner (top) and the new planner (middle) in rendering the kitchen pictured below (bottom).  Thank you goes to zeuss, who has mad skills with the IKEA Home Planner, Google’s free rendering tool Sketchup and its big brother Google Sketchup Pro, for putting the kitchen into the existing IKEA Home Planner for me. I haz NO skillz!

Current IKEA Home Planner Rendering of Kitchen Pictured Below

New IKEA Home Planner Rendering of Kitchen Pictured Below.

Actual Kitchen Rendered Above in Current and New IKEA Home Planners

Known as hadirajan here in the IKEAFANS forums, Jesper is the acting product owner for the IKEA Home Planner, as well as the Custom Worktop and Drawingfinder applications that IKEA uses internally.

In the IKEA Home Planner forum, he regularly answers questions for members, helps to troubleshoot problems with installation and use of the homeplanner and seeks feedback on issues the planner team is facing in development.   Of IKEAFANS, he says,

This is the main place where we try to help and seek feedback from customers.  I think [it] is great and I know that I’m not alone within IKEA to think that.”

Jesper’s been working with the homeplanner since September 2007 when he joined the team as a Business Analyst. He has previously worked at IKEA in Media, Transportation, Warehousing and Customer Service, though he started his career with IKEA in 2000 as a forklift operator.   He currently lives in Älmhult and commutes to Helsingborg to work in the IKEA Information Technology department 3-4 days per week.

Tags: hadirajan, IKEA Home Planner, IKEA IT, zeuss

This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 1:30 PM by Susan and is filed under IKEA Home Planner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.