From paper invoices to a loan on your phone

IKEA sent paper invoices. They were expensive to run and a poor experience for customers. We needed a faster, digital way to pay over time, built together with IKEA, our partner.

I was Customer Experience Manager and led a team of three UX designers. We built an e-invoice to replace the paper invoices. When we tested it with customers, we learned it wasn’t good enough.

We started on a loan product to replace the e-invoice: a 0% interest loan that customers could apply for on their phone while shopping. The UX team changed, and I joined it as a Senior UX Designer in a team of four.

I was responsible for the UX of the responsive website and the online management system (OAM). I also led all the user testing.

We talked to hundreds of customers in IKEA stores to learn what they needed while shopping.

We tested Figma prototypes with real users in different countries on UserTesting.com. I had introduced that platform at Ikano earlier.

We built a custom design system for the co-branding with IKEA.

We worked with the legal and compliance teams.

We gave input to the product team for future improvements.

Live in Sweden and the UK. The loan moved the company toward more digital products.

I first joined Ikano Bank as a consultant, working as lead designer in a small team of three. We were responsible for creating a new invoice system for IKEA (Ikano and IKEA share the same ownership, both founded by Ingvar Kamprad). After the initial project ended, I was offered a full-time role at the bank.

Over time, I took on several different roles, the most fun and rewarding one being Innovation Lead in a unit called Innovation Lab. It was run like a startup within the bank. We worked on early-stage ideas sourced from across the company: small, fast experiments that didn’t require full-scale approval. Some of them didn’t succeed and that was fine. The focus was on learning, and many of those learnings turned into working products.

Later, I joined another team called Customer Studio, where I worked as a designer building apps and websites for new IKEA-linked services. A big part of my work there was tied to the Voice of the Customer program. I implemented non-intrusive, optional in-product surveys and used that feedback to drive continuous improvement in the user experience.

During my time at Ikano, I also introduced fast, lightweight user testing by rolling out usertesting.com across the company. I was responsible for the account and helped teams quickly validate ideas without long planning cycles.

I stayed at Ikano Bank for 9 years. The culture, the trust, and the mix of structured banking and entrepreneurial thinking made it a place where I could try, fail, learn, and grow.