IKEA Placemat Cures (or Feeds) Your Smartphone Addiction
In an age where companies are feeling the pressure to jump on the digital bandwagon, what do you do when your business doesn’t specialize in it? IKEA, which primarily provides its customers with furniture, finds itself in just this predicament.
Earlier in the year, in a push to stay relevant, the superstore began making efforts to join the digital revolution with a line of furniture that actually charges your “smart” technology. Now IKEA is launching a limited edition line of tableware, including a placemat with…..wait for it….a pouch for your Smart phone sewn into it.
The “Logged Out” place mat is designed to make keeping your Smart phone close at hand, a little more subtle. Photo: IKEA
If you’re thinking, “gosh, that seems a bit unnecessary,” we couldn’t agree more.
The roughly $2 placemat, named “Logged Out,” allows you to keep your precious phone close at hand, without the overt rudeness of placing it in plain sight on the dining table. Fortunately for those afraid to miss a single notification (and unfortunately for everyone else), the weave is fairly loose, so you’ll notice a subdued glow through the fabric when urgent Facebook notifications come through.
With a loose weave, the place mat still keeps you abreast of any incoming notifications. Photo: IKEA
Initial reaction is skeptical at best. Slate.com concluded IKEA’s peculiar gadget-friendly placemat was “not helping things,” while a British magazine called Huh helpfully asks, “Is this truly the end of civilization as we know it?
The saddest part is perhaps that IKEA’s new placemat is not a terrible idea – well, it is a terrible idea in the grand scheme of what is right and wrong, but it’s not terrible from a business perspective. These babies are very likely to sell.
Your Smart phone will slip seamlessly into an elegant table setting. Photo: IKEA
In an age where most of us are addicted to our phones, we’re likely to seek out companies and products that make using that technology even easier. Even if they pretend to keep technology at a distance, when really they’re just facilitating our fixation. (They can call the place mat “Logged Out” but we’d have to say that this product keeps you decidedly and unsettlingly logged in.)
What happened to actually communicating with your table-mates at breakfast, lunch and dinner?
Ironically, the advertising campaign for this line of tableware, boast a vibrant scene of guests actually communicating IRL. Photo: IKEA
The “SITTNING” line of tableware will be available for a limited time at IKEA starting in September 2015.
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