9 ms·

Design principle: IKEA effect

187 points by jodooshi 9y ago

zzalpha 9y ago
For further coverage, this is also discussed in the (kinda disturbing) book Hooked as the Investment part of their cycle.
logicallee 9y ago
This is very interesting and new to me. Not mentioned in the article, but it also explains these yogurts you mix a dry side into ( https://www.google.com/search?q=yogurt+with+separate+topping https://www.google.com/search?q=yogurt+with+separate+topping ) However, I am concerned with the description I just read. I see many classes of products where the IKEA effect could be done very easily, yet is not. Does it really apply across the board? I wonder if anyone has done a very strict AB test against user satisfaction: for example, shipping boxes of hardware product that are fully assembled, or where the user must snap one thing together (that is easy and obvious). Do they observe a difference in user satisfaction? I am not certain I believe the effect is as described in this article, or as strong as described in this article, and wonder if anyone has done blinded AB tests.
- hammock 9y ago
  The two part yogurts are just so the granola doesn't get soggy... Edit: The greatest example of IKEA Effect in food is the story of how all-included cake mix (vs from scratch) didn't sell, until they removed the egg powder and required the addition of your own eggs. Which apparently is an old wives' tale http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp
  - logicallee 9y ago
    Says you. :) I've seen versions that would do just fine with the separated part mixed in. (They're not just with Granola.) At least we can agree that if there is an Ikea effect, then it is present in mixing your own Yogurt. However I am not convinced about the presence of the Ikea effect, as there are many classes of product it could apply to but, I don't see such product packaging. don't. If you go into an electronics store (a demographic that you would think responds stronger than average to the Ikea effect) most items are absolutely fully assembled. There is nothing to snap on, pull off, a sticker to apply, a thumb screw to screw in or unscrew, nothing. So if the Ikea effect is real (across a variety of product types), I am sure someone has done a test like to see it demonstrated by someone doing a blind AB test using two shipped versions and comparing customer satisfaction. I'm not going to blindly believe it because someone says it's real. It would be one thing if this explained an aspect of all the products of every category that I see everywhere - but it's just not the case. Companies aren't in the business of turning down free money, so if the Ikea effect were real then you'd see it in products everywhere. More likely, the theory is just false: that an AB test shows no increased customer satisfaction from token user-assembly, or even decreased satisfaction. This is why I asked if anyone has, in fact, done such a strictly controlled AB test.
    - MaulingMonkey 9y ago
      > If you go into an electronics store (a demographic that you would think responds stronger than average to the Ikea effect) most items are absolutely fully assembled. There is nothing to snap on, pull off, a sticker to apply, a thumb screw to screw in or unscrew, nothing. I've had to connect the monitor stand to the monitor for many/most of my monitors, and pretty much everything at least needs to be plugged in eventually. Unless the batteries are permanently installed, those are often separate too. To say nothing about building your own Desktop...
      - logicallee 9y ago
        Your monitor example is good and real, however due to the shape, it's not clear that it could easily be included fully assembled in the same-sized box. What I point out the lack of, is assembly where it could already be assembled. So, while you do have to attach a monitor to its base, you don't have to put on a rear panel, even if it snaps on, or do anything else gratuitous. (Added by the manufacturer as an assembly step purely for the Ikea effect.) In cases where something ships with batteries, it's usually not even included separately, but instead, already fully inserted. Since products don't add a gratuitous user assembly step, this leads me to believe that the Ikea effect is not real. An AB test would probably clear up whether it is.
        hammock 9y ago
        The "IKEA Effect" was not designed as such, it was stumbled on accidentally. The reason IKEA furniture is assembly-required is the same reason that your monitor stand comes detached from the monitor: because these companies operate on the principle that their products be flatpackable (minimize shipping dimensions).
        logicallee 9y ago
        Giving a theory a name doesn't mean it's a real effect. I would like to see a blind AB study that shows the effect is actually true and not someone's pet theory but which is actually false. I agree that the theory is nice and has explanatory power. Let's do a controlled study to see if it is real.
  - tacostakohashi 9y ago
    There's definitely more do it than that... apart from anything else, sometimes the other side is honey, or essentially fruit jam, which would be fine just sitting at the bottom or top of the yogurt (the way some other brands do it). I remember a TV ad for a brand of yogurt with separate compartments, so you can add "a little or a lot" of the side item to the yogurt. It was a gimmick that everybody made fun of because not having all of it seemed implausible, but somebody must have done their research and figured that people like the involvement or feeling of customizing their food.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      Similar to the transgressive image of Oreos being twisted apart in order to eat them properly. "You don't have to let The Man decide how you eat this."
  - logicallee 9y ago
    Regarding your edit: what I'm looking for is a genuine AB test. Example: suppose there was one packet (mixed dry batter) or two, and for B the user had to mix them. The Ikea effect says B gets better customer satisfaction than A. Someone downvoted all my comments in this thread. Apparently despite the fact that this is a product design guideline that in my opinion is easy (though not trivial) to test, either all the science in all the world can't test it, or we should accept the theory proposed in the article (that the Ikea effect is real, exists, and should he used in product design) without any testing. Cargo cult, anyone? :)
tetrep 9y ago
> The solution was to get out the egg of the dry mixture and allow people to add it themselves. I'm no foodie, but wouldn't dehyrdated/dried eggs be far less appealing taste and/or texture-wise? If not, why don't we see them around grocery stores? It seems like it'd be great to have non- or even just less perishable eggs.
- luhn 9y ago
  Dried eggs are definitely less desirable, but in cake batter they are there for neither taste nor texture, but rather for their chemical properties as a binding agent. Swapping out traditional egg for dried eggs wouldn't make a difference as long as the chemical effects are the same. Also, I'm not sure, but I'd guess that the "egg" previously in the cake mix was not actual dried egg, but some alternative binding agent.
  - aaronblohowiak 9y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdered_eggs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdered_eggs
    - luhn 9y ago
      I'm not sure why you're linking to that. Care to elaborate?
      - aaronblohowiak 9y ago
        The history of the powdered egg is based on a cake manufacturer that was sourcing liquid egg from china. By dehydrating the egg, they were able to save weight/space. So, I think it is likely that the powdered egg in cake mix was also the powdered egg variety.
- taneq 9y ago
  Yeah, I seem to recall reading that the egg story, while cute, is actually false and cake mixes require egg because they just couldn't make mixes with powdered egg taste as good.
amelius 9y ago
If this were true, then an unnecessarily difficult user-onboarding-procedure would make them like the product better.
- FiveDegrees 9y ago
  Vim or Emacs?
  - splicer 9y ago
    and most Linux distros
- Klockan 9y ago
  Difficult interviews serves this purpose as well.
- PKop 9y ago
  One may be able to take away a different message: Ensuring a short-term "win" for the user (perhaps by breaking up the on-boarding into small enough parts to ensure at least 1 part of it is "completed" vs. requiring the entire thing to be done (all or nothing) could engage more users. You might see more users complete the whole process, as well as become "active" users of product, if they are able to complete a part of it more easily...
- gingerlime 9y ago
  It's about finding a good balance. Too difficult and people give up. Too easy and people don't invest into the product. I think a similar thing applies to free vs paid. Some times paid is better because free can be treated as cheap or with little value. See also http://firstround.com/review/How-Lumosity-Spiked-Active-Users-10-with-Complexity-Not-Simplicity/ http://firstround.com/review/How-Lumosity-Spiked-Active-User...
- robert_tweed 9y ago
  Well, there's always survivor bias. Anyone willing to go the extra mile must really want that product.
Springtime 9y ago
I vaguely remember reading about this effect before but honestly, I've never met someone who expressed this feeling about Ikea products. Whether it's my own set-ups, friends, or the dozens of people I've bought and sold Ikea furniture from/to. If anything some have expressed frustration at the difficultly they had in putting together some builds. It's also said to cause sellers to place a higher value on the second-hand sale price due to the bias of assembling something of their own effect, however those I've bought from rather price their items substantially lower as they're looking to see them gone for various reasons. Perhaps this bias holds more true for things like home renovations as described elsewhere in articles on the effect. The application of this concept in tech for the examples I've read seems to be mostly in allowing customer customization which I do think helps give a feeling of creating something a little unique but personally I'd call it by some other name.
- douche 9y ago
  If you have difficulty in assembling IKEA furniture, I suspect you have trouble being a productive member of society.
  - dang 9y ago
    Personal attacks will get your account banned. It's seriously not ok to comment like this here, and we've warned you repeatedly, so surely you know this?
- stephenkais 9y ago
  I do agree that people have pride associated with their work, but I think this needs more rigorous testing. Anecdotally, I value everything I make with IKEA much less because I have no pride in my mechanical skills.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- praneshp 9y ago
  To counter with anecdotal evidence, all the people I know that use Ikea furniture love how easy it is to use/assemble. I do dislike how difficult it is to move furniture across houses though, I either need to move it as one piece or get the mover to disassemble/assemble.
appleflaxen 9y ago
that plot of "the sweet spot of getting to the ikea effect" is a mediocre visualazation... it implicitly puts "contribution" and "value" on the same axis with no way to decouple them. my biggest question that isn't answered is "how do you define contribution?". It's not a lot of work (because that's effort), and it's not how much it's worth in the end (because that's value). So... what quantity are we talking about, exactly. edit: remove extra words
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  I found the plot a bit odd also. But I don't consult designers for mathematical problems. The text communicated to me that contribution and value are not directly proportional. The "quantity" of contribution is measured on an emotional scale. It's how the individual feels about the impact of their effort. This is different than the value of their effort. For example, someone telling a joke, the value stays the same, x% laugh at it. But if the joke were to go viral and tens of thousands of people laugh, the contribution is increased (making more people laugh). But the value is the same. The audience had x% chance of laughing. A different example is the original Star Trek. The value of showing fictional technologies like videoconferencing and cell phones was very low. It was part entertainment value and mostly expedited storytelling. But the contribution to human society is hugely significant, just by prompting people to action, to pursue the development of such tech, and also by helping people visualize how such tech would simplify things and make time spent more productive.
bambax 9y ago
> People had the need to be emotionally invested and get rewards from the process of making the cake not just the end result. Yes! Not sure it really works with Ikea, but it works in other contexts. See this (excellent) video from Ooshma Garg of Gobble telling the story of her startup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A21qyXsAfME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A21qyXsAfME Gobble was at first a marketplace where local people could sell their ready-made food to other people who don't have time to cook but don't want to order ordinary take-out. In order to grow her startup she asked customers what they wanted; they said they wanted instant orders and it failed. Then she produced excellent food, and all you had to do was heat it up in the microwave. People loved the food but sales were sluggish. The main insight was gained by watching customers use the product inside their homes; they discovered that although the food was good, people were ashamed to serve microwaved food to their loved ones. So Gobble offered ready-to-cook elements that you can prepare in a pan, and the startup really took off then. Maybe she would have saved some time by reading this post! ;-)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- vosper 9y ago
  It's sad that the stigma persists of microwaved food being somehow lesser than "real" cooked food. A microwave is just another tool in the kitchen. People shouldn't be embarrassed to use it.
  - wfunction 9y ago
    I mean, it frequently is. I don't know about you but my microwaved food doesn't always get heated evenly. (Sure, maybe it would if I put it there 10x longer at 10% power, but then that would defeat the point of my use of the microwave.) And it's hard to cook things in a microwave... it's far more suited to reheating pre-cooked food. Not that I'm a chef, but it's not a wrong perception IMO.
    - weaksauce 9y ago
      Unless you have an inverter type microwave it's always full power when cooking at 10% it's actually just 10% active time with the magnetron running full blast. As a tool, a microwave is like a blunt instrument unless you have the nicer microwaves. 10% is akin to running the flame to ultra high and only putting the skillet down 6 seconds every minute. Not efficient and not good technique. Coupled with the fact that microwaves operate by exciting the water molecules in the food and you have uneven cooking if there is a large discrepancy between the water content of different foods on the same plate. Finally, without special gear, you can't really brown or crisp anything in the microwave so the end result is more mushy than most people desire.
H_Romeu_Pinto 9y ago
> The article is inspired by the book “Universal Design principles” by William Lidwell. The book doesn't talk about this specific design principle. But the same author has a course at Lynda.com where he explains exactly that, giving the same name and using the cake mix as an example, too. But Dan Ariely is probably the first guy that came with the idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkaWYKlnli0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkaWYKlnli0 also with the cake example.
obstinate 9y ago
Holy shit. This really does describe my relationship with my IKEA furniture. This is amazingly insightful.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
DubiousPusher 9y ago
Maybe I'm a snob but I begrudgingly buy IKEA products, view assembling them as tedium in which I gain 0 improvement in a translatable skill and despise the sight of their borderline cardboard junkiness until the day I can replace them and send them off with some stranger. edit: On the flip side, IKEA actually sells some really nice pulls and handles for a price far below what I've seen anywhere else.
eternalban 9y ago
Golang for furniture.
Rexxar 9y ago
If the effect applies to programming languages, it could explain why some people love lisp so much.
- andrewflnr 9y ago
  It kind of shades into post-purchase rationalization, which is (in my experience), the standard theory of why programmers get attached to all kinds of tools, notably text editors with high learning curves. Bear in mind that I am a bit of a Rust enthusiast myself, but I wonder if this effect is a contributor to Rust hype.
  - hueving 9y ago
    Post purchase rationalization doesn't apply in the rust example because you've received gains that no other language offers. I learned it knowing well up front that it had a difficult learning curve and that was the price to pay for safe/performant code.
    - andrewflnr 9y ago
      Humans being what they are, the actual benefits don't necessarily come into the equation. :) Sure, Rust's manifold qualities contribute to its popularity, but post-purchase rationalization could still be one of the reasons that people get excited about it.
mxfh 9y ago
With IKEA, at least I, don't value my efforts, but the savings compared to having to pay someone for a perceived(!) zero-skill job, while still getting the same product. For me it's the over-embellishment of the general trend of transitioning things over from the production and retail to the consumer, charging only marginally less to beat the competition, while reaping in the profit, while marketing the whole thing as empowerment. The build and material quality of an IKEA furniture is almost never anywhere near a well made furniture, it's only big plus is in being affordable due to economies of scale and low transport and storage costs. Recently IKEA seems to get just outright greedy. Their material quality and thickness went from solid to barely tolerable in the last 10 years. For me they are at a borderline point of becoming disposable furniture, where it makes no sense to disassemble to move furniture even in your own house due to the one-time only quality of the connections. Peddling in an urban or more relevantly marketing myth, doesn't even help either: «The key marketing innovation that Dichter’s analysis spurred was not the fresh-egg cake mix, but rather the repositioning of cakes as merely one element of a larger product, an overall creation that entailed a much greater degree of participation and creativity from homemakers and emphasized appearance[!] over taste»[1] It's a trick! You get a less tasty product, a mere product transitioned into an outlet of ego. I you're not only into marketing, but also want a good product it's important to be aware of that deceptive effect. [1] http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp
gallerdude 9y ago
In my experience, if someone has a vague interest in something, then any new information (in an easy and digestible fashion) goes a long way in making them care a lot more about what you do.
emanreus 9y ago
Also known as Stockholm syndrome :)
rdlecler1 9y ago
This feels dubious. People go to ikea because it is cheap but stylish, and flat back saves shipping costs.
- ouid 9y ago
  The cake mix example was much more compelling to me.
dennyis 9y ago
I just recently bought my first piece of nicer furniture, not Ikea, but a bed from Crate and Barrel. Not only did I love the style of the bed, but they scheduled delivery to my house. I assumed I still had to put it together, but the delivery guys assembled the bed in my room and put the mattress on top. IMO This is way better than spending 2 hours driving to Ikea, wandering around, buying, loading, unloading, and assembling the item.
williamle8300 9y ago
The only problem is that IKEA furniture smells like formaldehyde (more often than not).
kleiba 9y ago
"People tend to place high value on products they partially have created. Hence, the name IKEA effect." - Frankly, I've never met anyone who thought that IKEA products are of particularly high value. They're great because they offer modern-looking furniture that even students can afford, but at least where I live, the middle class stops considering IKEA once they leave student status behind, unless it's for book shelves or stuff like that in the study or the basement, i.e, not for rooms you actually live in.
- andai 9y ago
  Where do you live? I guess I've only lived in poor and/or stingy countries, where frugality has a high status.
hdhzy 9y ago
Very interesting principle. Now when I think about this games utilize this design heavily. For example in Final Fantasy X you can select which statistics to improve or skills to learn on a Sphere Grid. The Grid is designed so that its effect is mostly predictable and similar to previous games (in terms of skills learned and stats increased) but the player has a feeling like he was in control here.
real-hacker 9y ago
That's why there are tens of thousands of toy web frameworks out there. It's quite a simple task (basically assembling routing/template engine/ORM, etc), but programmers just cannot resist the sense of accomplishment from such a project. Because the end product looks so valuable, people just ignore how little value was added in that process. BTW, I am not talking about full-featured production-level web frameworks.

187 points by jodooshi 9y ago

For further coverage, this is also discussed in the (kinda disturbing) book Hooked as the Investment part of their cycle.

logicallee 9y ago

This is very interesting and new to me. Not mentioned in the article, but it also explains these yogurts you mix a dry side into ( https://www.google.com/search?q=yogurt+with+separate+topping https://www.google.com/search?q=yogurt+with+separate+topping ) However, I am concerned with the description I just read. I see many classes of products where the IKEA effect could be done very easily, yet is not. Does it really apply across the board? I wonder if anyone has done a very strict AB test against user satisfaction: for example, shipping boxes of hardware product that are fully assembled, or where the user must snap one thing together (that is easy and obvious). Do they observe a difference in user satisfaction? I am not certain I believe the effect is as described in this article, or as strong as described in this article, and wonder if anyone has done blinded AB tests.

hammock 9y ago
The two part yogurts are just so the granola doesn't get soggy... Edit: The greatest example of IKEA Effect in food is the story of how all-included cake mix (vs from scratch) didn't sell, until they removed the egg powder and required the addition of your own eggs. Which apparently is an old wives' tale http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp
- logicallee 9y ago
  Says you. :) I've seen versions that would do just fine with the separated part mixed in. (They're not just with Granola.) At least we can agree that if there is an Ikea effect, then it is present in mixing your own Yogurt. However I am not convinced about the presence of the Ikea effect, as there are many classes of product it could apply to but, I don't see such product packaging. don't. If you go into an electronics store (a demographic that you would think responds stronger than average to the Ikea effect) most items are absolutely fully assembled. There is nothing to snap on, pull off, a sticker to apply, a thumb screw to screw in or unscrew, nothing. So if the Ikea effect is real (across a variety of product types), I am sure someone has done a test like to see it demonstrated by someone doing a blind AB test using two shipped versions and comparing customer satisfaction. I'm not going to blindly believe it because someone says it's real. It would be one thing if this explained an aspect of all the products of every category that I see everywhere - but it's just not the case. Companies aren't in the business of turning down free money, so if the Ikea effect were real then you'd see it in products everywhere. More likely, the theory is just false: that an AB test shows no increased customer satisfaction from token user-assembly, or even decreased satisfaction. This is why I asked if anyone has, in fact, done such a strictly controlled AB test.
  - MaulingMonkey 9y ago
    > If you go into an electronics store (a demographic that you would think responds stronger than average to the Ikea effect) most items are absolutely fully assembled. There is nothing to snap on, pull off, a sticker to apply, a thumb screw to screw in or unscrew, nothing. I've had to connect the monitor stand to the monitor for many/most of my monitors, and pretty much everything at least needs to be plugged in eventually. Unless the batteries are permanently installed, those are often separate too. To say nothing about building your own Desktop...
    - logicallee 9y ago
      Your monitor example is good and real, however due to the shape, it's not clear that it could easily be included fully assembled in the same-sized box. What I point out the lack of, is assembly where it could already be assembled. So, while you do have to attach a monitor to its base, you don't have to put on a rear panel, even if it snaps on, or do anything else gratuitous. (Added by the manufacturer as an assembly step purely for the Ikea effect.) In cases where something ships with batteries, it's usually not even included separately, but instead, already fully inserted. Since products don't add a gratuitous user assembly step, this leads me to believe that the Ikea effect is not real. An AB test would probably clear up whether it is.
      - hammock 9y ago
        The "IKEA Effect" was not designed as such, it was stumbled on accidentally. The reason IKEA furniture is assembly-required is the same reason that your monitor stand comes detached from the monitor: because these companies operate on the principle that their products be flatpackable (minimize shipping dimensions).
        logicallee 9y ago
        Giving a theory a name doesn't mean it's a real effect. I would like to see a blind AB study that shows the effect is actually true and not someone's pet theory but which is actually false. I agree that the theory is nice and has explanatory power. Let's do a controlled study to see if it is real.
- tacostakohashi 9y ago
  There's definitely more do it than that... apart from anything else, sometimes the other side is honey, or essentially fruit jam, which would be fine just sitting at the bottom or top of the yogurt (the way some other brands do it). I remember a TV ad for a brand of yogurt with separate compartments, so you can add "a little or a lot" of the side item to the yogurt. It was a gimmick that everybody made fun of because not having all of it seemed implausible, but somebody must have done their research and figured that people like the involvement or feeling of customizing their food.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    Similar to the transgressive image of Oreos being twisted apart in order to eat them properly. "You don't have to let The Man decide how you eat this."
- logicallee 9y ago
  Regarding your edit: what I'm looking for is a genuine AB test. Example: suppose there was one packet (mixed dry batter) or two, and for B the user had to mix them. The Ikea effect says B gets better customer satisfaction than A. Someone downvoted all my comments in this thread. Apparently despite the fact that this is a product design guideline that in my opinion is easy (though not trivial) to test, either all the science in all the world can't test it, or we should accept the theory proposed in the article (that the Ikea effect is real, exists, and should he used in product design) without any testing. Cargo cult, anyone? :)

tetrep 9y ago

> The solution was to get out the egg of the dry mixture and allow people to add it themselves. I'm no foodie, but wouldn't dehyrdated/dried eggs be far less appealing taste and/or texture-wise? If not, why don't we see them around grocery stores? It seems like it'd be great to have non- or even just less perishable eggs.

luhn 9y ago
Dried eggs are definitely less desirable, but in cake batter they are there for neither taste nor texture, but rather for their chemical properties as a binding agent. Swapping out traditional egg for dried eggs wouldn't make a difference as long as the chemical effects are the same. Also, I'm not sure, but I'd guess that the "egg" previously in the cake mix was not actual dried egg, but some alternative binding agent.
- aaronblohowiak 9y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdered_eggs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdered_eggs
  - luhn 9y ago
    I'm not sure why you're linking to that. Care to elaborate?
    - aaronblohowiak 9y ago
      The history of the powdered egg is based on a cake manufacturer that was sourcing liquid egg from china. By dehydrating the egg, they were able to save weight/space. So, I think it is likely that the powdered egg in cake mix was also the powdered egg variety.
taneq 9y ago
Yeah, I seem to recall reading that the egg story, while cute, is actually false and cake mixes require egg because they just couldn't make mixes with powdered egg taste as good.

amelius 9y ago

If this were true, then an unnecessarily difficult user-onboarding-procedure would make them like the product better.

FiveDegrees 9y ago
Vim or Emacs?
- splicer 9y ago
  and most Linux distros
Klockan 9y ago
Difficult interviews serves this purpose as well.
PKop 9y ago
One may be able to take away a different message: Ensuring a short-term "win" for the user (perhaps by breaking up the on-boarding into small enough parts to ensure at least 1 part of it is "completed" vs. requiring the entire thing to be done (all or nothing) could engage more users. You might see more users complete the whole process, as well as become "active" users of product, if they are able to complete a part of it more easily...
gingerlime 9y ago
It's about finding a good balance. Too difficult and people give up. Too easy and people don't invest into the product. I think a similar thing applies to free vs paid. Some times paid is better because free can be treated as cheap or with little value. See also http://firstround.com/review/How-Lumosity-Spiked-Active-Users-10-with-Complexity-Not-Simplicity/ http://firstround.com/review/How-Lumosity-Spiked-Active-User...
robert_tweed 9y ago
Well, there's always survivor bias. Anyone willing to go the extra mile must really want that product.

Springtime 9y ago

I vaguely remember reading about this effect before but honestly, I've never met someone who expressed this feeling about Ikea products. Whether it's my own set-ups, friends, or the dozens of people I've bought and sold Ikea furniture from/to. If anything some have expressed frustration at the difficultly they had in putting together some builds. It's also said to cause sellers to place a higher value on the second-hand sale price due to the bias of assembling something of their own effect, however those I've bought from rather price their items substantially lower as they're looking to see them gone for various reasons. Perhaps this bias holds more true for things like home renovations as described elsewhere in articles on the effect. The application of this concept in tech for the examples I've read seems to be mostly in allowing customer customization which I do think helps give a feeling of creating something a little unique but personally I'd call it by some other name.

douche 9y ago
If you have difficulty in assembling IKEA furniture, I suspect you have trouble being a productive member of society.
- dang 9y ago
  Personal attacks will get your account banned. It's seriously not ok to comment like this here, and we've warned you repeatedly, so surely you know this?
stephenkais 9y ago
I do agree that people have pride associated with their work, but I think this needs more rigorous testing. Anecdotally, I value everything I make with IKEA much less because I have no pride in my mechanical skills.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
praneshp 9y ago
To counter with anecdotal evidence, all the people I know that use Ikea furniture love how easy it is to use/assemble. I do dislike how difficult it is to move furniture across houses though, I either need to move it as one piece or get the mover to disassemble/assemble.

appleflaxen 9y ago

that plot of "the sweet spot of getting to the ikea effect" is a mediocre visualazation... it implicitly puts "contribution" and "value" on the same axis with no way to decouple them. my biggest question that isn't answered is "how do you define contribution?". It's not a lot of work (because that's effort), and it's not how much it's worth in the end (because that's value). So... what quantity are we talking about, exactly. edit: remove extra words

CodeWriter23 9y ago
I found the plot a bit odd also. But I don't consult designers for mathematical problems. The text communicated to me that contribution and value are not directly proportional. The "quantity" of contribution is measured on an emotional scale. It's how the individual feels about the impact of their effort. This is different than the value of their effort. For example, someone telling a joke, the value stays the same, x% laugh at it. But if the joke were to go viral and tens of thousands of people laugh, the contribution is increased (making more people laugh). But the value is the same. The audience had x% chance of laughing. A different example is the original Star Trek. The value of showing fictional technologies like videoconferencing and cell phones was very low. It was part entertainment value and mostly expedited storytelling. But the contribution to human society is hugely significant, just by prompting people to action, to pursue the development of such tech, and also by helping people visualize how such tech would simplify things and make time spent more productive.

bambax 9y ago

> People had the need to be emotionally invested and get rewards from the process of making the cake not just the end result. Yes! Not sure it really works with Ikea, but it works in other contexts. See this (excellent) video from Ooshma Garg of Gobble telling the story of her startup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A21qyXsAfME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A21qyXsAfME Gobble was at first a marketplace where local people could sell their ready-made food to other people who don't have time to cook but don't want to order ordinary take-out. In order to grow her startup she asked customers what they wanted; they said they wanted instant orders and it failed. Then she produced excellent food, and all you had to do was heat it up in the microwave. People loved the food but sales were sluggish. The main insight was gained by watching customers use the product inside their homes; they discovered that although the food was good, people were ashamed to serve microwaved food to their loved ones. So Gobble offered ready-to-cook elements that you can prepare in a pan, and the startup really took off then. Maybe she would have saved some time by reading this post! ;-)

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vosper 9y ago
It's sad that the stigma persists of microwaved food being somehow lesser than "real" cooked food. A microwave is just another tool in the kitchen. People shouldn't be embarrassed to use it.
- wfunction 9y ago
  I mean, it frequently is. I don't know about you but my microwaved food doesn't always get heated evenly. (Sure, maybe it would if I put it there 10x longer at 10% power, but then that would defeat the point of my use of the microwave.) And it's hard to cook things in a microwave... it's far more suited to reheating pre-cooked food. Not that I'm a chef, but it's not a wrong perception IMO.
  - weaksauce 9y ago
    Unless you have an inverter type microwave it's always full power when cooking at 10% it's actually just 10% active time with the magnetron running full blast. As a tool, a microwave is like a blunt instrument unless you have the nicer microwaves. 10% is akin to running the flame to ultra high and only putting the skillet down 6 seconds every minute. Not efficient and not good technique. Coupled with the fact that microwaves operate by exciting the water molecules in the food and you have uneven cooking if there is a large discrepancy between the water content of different foods on the same plate. Finally, without special gear, you can't really brown or crisp anything in the microwave so the end result is more mushy than most people desire.

H_Romeu_Pinto 9y ago

> The article is inspired by the book “Universal Design principles” by William Lidwell. The book doesn't talk about this specific design principle. But the same author has a course at Lynda.com where he explains exactly that, giving the same name and using the cake mix as an example, too. But Dan Ariely is probably the first guy that came with the idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkaWYKlnli0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkaWYKlnli0 also with the cake example.

obstinate 9y ago

Holy shit. This really does describe my relationship with my IKEA furniture. This is amazingly insightful.

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DubiousPusher 9y ago

Maybe I'm a snob but I begrudgingly buy IKEA products, view assembling them as tedium in which I gain 0 improvement in a translatable skill and despise the sight of their borderline cardboard junkiness until the day I can replace them and send them off with some stranger. edit: On the flip side, IKEA actually sells some really nice pulls and handles for a price far below what I've seen anywhere else.

eternalban 9y ago

Golang for furniture.

Rexxar 9y ago

If the effect applies to programming languages, it could explain why some people love lisp so much.

andrewflnr 9y ago
It kind of shades into post-purchase rationalization, which is (in my experience), the standard theory of why programmers get attached to all kinds of tools, notably text editors with high learning curves. Bear in mind that I am a bit of a Rust enthusiast myself, but I wonder if this effect is a contributor to Rust hype.
- hueving 9y ago
  Post purchase rationalization doesn't apply in the rust example because you've received gains that no other language offers. I learned it knowing well up front that it had a difficult learning curve and that was the price to pay for safe/performant code.
  - andrewflnr 9y ago
    Humans being what they are, the actual benefits don't necessarily come into the equation. :) Sure, Rust's manifold qualities contribute to its popularity, but post-purchase rationalization could still be one of the reasons that people get excited about it.

mxfh 9y ago

With IKEA, at least I, don't value my efforts, but the savings compared to having to pay someone for a perceived(!) zero-skill job, while still getting the same product. For me it's the over-embellishment of the general trend of transitioning things over from the production and retail to the consumer, charging only marginally less to beat the competition, while reaping in the profit, while marketing the whole thing as empowerment. The build and material quality of an IKEA furniture is almost never anywhere near a well made furniture, it's only big plus is in being affordable due to economies of scale and low transport and storage costs. Recently IKEA seems to get just outright greedy. Their material quality and thickness went from solid to barely tolerable in the last 10 years. For me they are at a borderline point of becoming disposable furniture, where it makes no sense to disassemble to move furniture even in your own house due to the one-time only quality of the connections. Peddling in an urban or more relevantly marketing myth, doesn't even help either: «The key marketing innovation that Dichter’s analysis spurred was not the fresh-egg cake mix, but rather the repositioning of cakes as merely one element of a larger product, an overall creation that entailed a much greater degree of participation and creativity from homemakers and emphasized appearance[!] over taste»[1] It's a trick! You get a less tasty product, a mere product transitioned into an outlet of ego. I you're not only into marketing, but also want a good product it's important to be aware of that deceptive effect. [1] http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp

gallerdude 9y ago

In my experience, if someone has a vague interest in something, then any new information (in an easy and digestible fashion) goes a long way in making them care a lot more about what you do.

emanreus 9y ago

Also known as Stockholm syndrome :)

rdlecler1 9y ago

This feels dubious. People go to ikea because it is cheap but stylish, and flat back saves shipping costs.

ouid 9y ago
The cake mix example was much more compelling to me.

dennyis 9y ago

I just recently bought my first piece of nicer furniture, not Ikea, but a bed from Crate and Barrel. Not only did I love the style of the bed, but they scheduled delivery to my house. I assumed I still had to put it together, but the delivery guys assembled the bed in my room and put the mattress on top. IMO This is way better than spending 2 hours driving to Ikea, wandering around, buying, loading, unloading, and assembling the item.

williamle8300 9y ago

The only problem is that IKEA furniture smells like formaldehyde (more often than not).

kleiba 9y ago

"People tend to place high value on products they partially have created. Hence, the name IKEA effect." - Frankly, I've never met anyone who thought that IKEA products are of particularly high value. They're great because they offer modern-looking furniture that even students can afford, but at least where I live, the middle class stops considering IKEA once they leave student status behind, unless it's for book shelves or stuff like that in the study or the basement, i.e, not for rooms you actually live in.

andai 9y ago
Where do you live? I guess I've only lived in poor and/or stingy countries, where frugality has a high status.

hdhzy 9y ago

Very interesting principle. Now when I think about this games utilize this design heavily. For example in Final Fantasy X you can select which statistics to improve or skills to learn on a Sphere Grid. The Grid is designed so that its effect is mostly predictable and similar to previous games (in terms of skills learned and stats increased) but the player has a feeling like he was in control here.

real-hacker 9y ago

That's why there are tens of thousands of toy web frameworks out there. It's quite a simple task (basically assembling routing/template engine/ORM, etc), but programmers just cannot resist the sense of accomplishment from such a project. Because the end product looks so valuable, people just ignore how little value was added in that process. BTW, I am not talking about full-featured production-level web frameworks.