IKEA has an ambition to inspire and enable more than 1 billion people to live a better everyday life within the limits of the planet. 
We want to offer affordable and accessible solutions for healthy and sustainable living through our home furnishing offer, knowledge and ideas meeting all customer touch points.

Today technological developments impact all aspects of our lives. We want to explore how to use and develop technology to support a more satisfying future living! 
In a time when materials can sense and react to the surroundings, be programmed, or just made in a smarter way - we see a lot of new opportunities!

We want to surprise ourselves and our customers, strengthen our range and product portfolio with meaningful products. We are obsessed with being a (textile) leader in life at home, what role can textile innovation play in that?

With IKEAs knowledge about life at home, we have a chance to meet and develop our offers with the idea of the “internet of textiles” from a democratic design perspective. We are open-minded to look within and around what we see on the market today, which are mainly technology-driven solutions. With our IKEA values as the base, we have the chance to bring improvements for humanity through digital democratic design. 

Material & Innovation Textiles, Category Area Textile Furnishing are in lead for exploring and developing disruptive/smarter/future textiles in close collaboration with our Home Furnishing Businesses (HFBs) who are developing the final product offer. We want disruptive textiles to explore future solutions, prototyping, and testing the future conceptual textiles.
How do YOU want to live with technology in the future?

This is predominately a desk top study where the majority of the thesis will be made remotely. Where possible we bring students to IKEA of Sweden in Älmhult to meet and experience the head office. Should be possibility arise, we may also enable in person visits to external parties which can support the thesis development. This will be subject to travel and meet recommendations.

Master level, Skills/education, and interest in either/or following topics:
Design (textile, product, interior, light, stage design, interaction, UX, game,); Engineer (electronics, programming, textile, light); Surprise us (philosophy, sociology, management, business development…)

You MUST have a passion and curiosity for creating a better everyday life for people and planet, to try bringing your educational topic and skill set into the context of future ways of living with textiles.

We are a Global organization, strong communication skills in English are required.

Be inspired!!
A Master's thesis could cover parts or details in this movement: From customers insights and future needs, material and technology research to prototyping, potential/analysis for scaling up (from prototype to production). Interactive textile designs, user studies, and product evaluation (what learnings are made and what knowledge will we take with us in further development), last but not least new business models for disruptive recyclable textile products.
Novel interior materials as optical fibers, conductive yarn, and/or prints are enabling interactive, dynamic, and multifunctional expressions and functions. You may be interested in weaving with optical fibers, 3D printed textiles, or knitting solar cells?

We are curious about how you will interpret disruptive textile furnishing. It can be a scope suggested by you or a contribution to any of the following;
•    Improved known product types with better functions and material features
•    Interactive multifunctional products 
•    Connected newly added features, combining digital and physical spaces

If you have any questions about the recruitment process you are welcome to contact IKEA Supervisor  Linda Worbin, [email protected].
We are looking forward to your application!

Please submit both your CV and motivational letter in English by the latest November 14th. We are reviewing applications as they come through so don’t wait to apply!

Curious to know more and meet potential future colleagues??…join a live TEAMS session to listen and ask any questions you have on OCTOBER 11th 10:00-11:30 CET

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZjRiNmM1MzUtNjQ0NC00OTdhLWE5ZTEtYThhYTNlNGU2MWY4%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22a33c6ac4-a52e-45c5-af07-b972df9bd004%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%227d2a0890-2306-4566-b396-4cfeccdc5bd3%22%7d

Please note:
To take part of the Thesis work, you have to be enrolled in a Thesis course provided at university level/Thesis agreement within a university in Sweden.