8 ms·

IKEA assembly is a trivial task, the fact that it's perceived as otherwise is more an indication of the functional illiteracy and lack of basic mechanical knowl

IKEA assembly is a trivial task, the fact that it's perceived as otherwise is more an indication of the functional illiteracy and lack of basic mechanical knowledge in the population than anything else. Nevertheless, the fact that IKEA furniture is insanely popular would tend to indicate that many do not find assembly to be overly difficult.

nkrisc 9y ago
I suspect that most readers here could assemble IKEA furniture based on a picture of the completed item without ever looking at the instructions. That is probably not true of most people in the general population.
- greymeister 9y ago
  I assemble by just glancing over the pictures, but that's also how I ended up with a bookshelf where the bottom shelf is facing the wrong direction!
analogmemory 9y ago
Not everyone has an engineer mentality. There’s a reason it’s become a meme, some people get honestly stumped by the instructions. Lack tables are easy and so are chairs. I’ve bought some of their larger and more complicated items and would often stare at the instructions cursing.
majormajor 9y ago
From what I've seen, it's only tricky for some people because the instructions are shitty - pictures only, low detail, all the parts and fasteners bundled together instead of pre-sorted, etc. A certain amount of trial and error is to be expected. And if it was that hard you wouldn't see so many people with so much Ikea furniture out there. :) The robot was "fed a kind of manual, a set of ordered instructions on how the pieces fit together" - if all it was given was pictures of the real manual, that would be quite cool, but I'd love to see more details here.
- petepete 9y ago
  The instructions definitely aren't shitty. Pictures-only makes it really simple and the instructions are clear and display exactly which components are required at each step.
  - yongjik 9y ago
    Some instructions are pretty confusing. There are places where a more mindful manufacturer would have said "Please remember to only assemble leg 1, 2 and 3, but not 4, because you will have to insert foobar in Step 7 later." But of course IKEA doesn't want to pay translators to write that sentence in 20+ languages, so pictures only it goes.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    They're simplified to the point of minimal cost, not to the point of maximal clarity. Here's how you make it far easier: Label the pieces by type: A, B, C, etc Add corresponding annotations to the manual. Other brands do this. It vastly reduces the amount of time spent "is this the right piece of plywood? Or is it this other one? Which of these two screws?" Some context through text would help even more in certain places, but you don't even have to go that far to make it a lot easier for people not familiar with matching parts to diagrams.
    - WillPostForFood 9y ago
      They do label all the screws and small parts, which are easiest to confuse. It really isn’t necessary for the large pieces.
      - majormajor 9y ago
        I put this together last week, https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40219285/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40219285/ , and didn't have those labels for that. That's not the hardest one to keep the screws separate, but I've seen worse that I'm pretty sure were tossed all together, too. What's fun about that nightstand is that you have to really look at the picture in details to figure out which side up and which side forwards for the drawer slider stuff.
bambax 9y ago
Yes, assembling Ikea furniture is very easy, but memes are not really based on reality. Maybe it's the opposite. Mayonnaise is the most popular sauce ever; yet the meme is that it's "disgusting". Almost everybody has Ikea at home; yet the meme is that it's impossible to assemble. Maybe memes are trying to tell us something... but I'm not sure what.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  memes are not really based on reality We should take this back to the original formulation of "meme" by Richard Dawkins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Origins Maybe it's the opposite. Memes, in the academic sense, are just ideas that can propagate very well. Ideas don't have to be true to propagate. Mayonnaise is the most popular sauce ever; yet the meme is that it's "disgusting". Disgust is a very useful emotion to aid in the propagation of an idea. Outrage is another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://hbr.org/2016/05/research-the-link-between-feeling-in-control-and-viral-content https://hbr.org/2016/05/research-the-link-between-feeling-in...
- smelendez 9y ago
  Assembling Ikea furniture is easy in the sense that most people can do it eventually, but it's kind of tedious, easy to make an annoying mistake that requires backtracking and often stressful. People elsewhere in the thread mentioned assembling it with kids around, and often you're putting it together at a hectic time because you've just moved or need the furniture ready and the house clean before having guests, etc. Enough people have had these experiences that the meme is popular. I don't personally care for mayonnaise. I think the memes are popular precisely because mayonnaise is so popular. A lot of the anti-mayo memes I've seen complaining about mayonnaise are about finding it where you don't expect it or ordering sandwiches without it and still getting it. There are fewer memes ranting about less common ingredients like Buffalo sauce or hummus because you don't have to go out of your way to avoid those.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Yeah. It’s usually fairly straightforward and is pretty easy for small pieces. Something like a large dresser though, while perhaps not being hard, can be rather tedious to plow through.
pcrh 9y ago
IKEA assembly is trivial for most humans. But that is not the point of the article. The point of the article is that it is non-trivial for humans to make robots able to do what they can do easily themselves. The IKEA task was likely chosen because it is something many people have personal experience with, which makes for better public understanding and engagement with the underlying engineering work being displayed.

nkrisc 9y ago

I suspect that most readers here could assemble IKEA furniture based on a picture of the completed item without ever looking at the instructions. That is probably not true of most people in the general population.

greymeister 9y ago
I assemble by just glancing over the pictures, but that's also how I ended up with a bookshelf where the bottom shelf is facing the wrong direction!

analogmemory 9y ago

Not everyone has an engineer mentality. There’s a reason it’s become a meme, some people get honestly stumped by the instructions. Lack tables are easy and so are chairs. I’ve bought some of their larger and more complicated items and would often stare at the instructions cursing.

majormajor 9y ago

From what I've seen, it's only tricky for some people because the instructions are shitty - pictures only, low detail, all the parts and fasteners bundled together instead of pre-sorted, etc. A certain amount of trial and error is to be expected. And if it was that hard you wouldn't see so many people with so much Ikea furniture out there. :) The robot was "fed a kind of manual, a set of ordered instructions on how the pieces fit together" - if all it was given was pictures of the real manual, that would be quite cool, but I'd love to see more details here.

petepete 9y ago
The instructions definitely aren't shitty. Pictures-only makes it really simple and the instructions are clear and display exactly which components are required at each step.
- yongjik 9y ago
  Some instructions are pretty confusing. There are places where a more mindful manufacturer would have said "Please remember to only assemble leg 1, 2 and 3, but not 4, because you will have to insert foobar in Step 7 later." But of course IKEA doesn't want to pay translators to write that sentence in 20+ languages, so pictures only it goes.
- majormajor 9y ago
  They're simplified to the point of minimal cost, not to the point of maximal clarity. Here's how you make it far easier: Label the pieces by type: A, B, C, etc Add corresponding annotations to the manual. Other brands do this. It vastly reduces the amount of time spent "is this the right piece of plywood? Or is it this other one? Which of these two screws?" Some context through text would help even more in certain places, but you don't even have to go that far to make it a lot easier for people not familiar with matching parts to diagrams.
  - WillPostForFood 9y ago
    They do label all the screws and small parts, which are easiest to confuse. It really isn’t necessary for the large pieces.
    - majormajor 9y ago
      I put this together last week, https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40219285/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40219285/ , and didn't have those labels for that. That's not the hardest one to keep the screws separate, but I've seen worse that I'm pretty sure were tossed all together, too. What's fun about that nightstand is that you have to really look at the picture in details to figure out which side up and which side forwards for the drawer slider stuff.

bambax 9y ago

Yes, assembling Ikea furniture is very easy, but memes are not really based on reality. Maybe it's the opposite. Mayonnaise is the most popular sauce ever; yet the meme is that it's "disgusting". Almost everybody has Ikea at home; yet the meme is that it's impossible to assemble. Maybe memes are trying to tell us something... but I'm not sure what.

stcredzero 9y ago
memes are not really based on reality We should take this back to the original formulation of "meme" by Richard Dawkins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Origins Maybe it's the opposite. Memes, in the academic sense, are just ideas that can propagate very well. Ideas don't have to be true to propagate. Mayonnaise is the most popular sauce ever; yet the meme is that it's "disgusting". Disgust is a very useful emotion to aid in the propagation of an idea. Outrage is another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://hbr.org/2016/05/research-the-link-between-feeling-in-control-and-viral-content https://hbr.org/2016/05/research-the-link-between-feeling-in...
smelendez 9y ago
Assembling Ikea furniture is easy in the sense that most people can do it eventually, but it's kind of tedious, easy to make an annoying mistake that requires backtracking and often stressful. People elsewhere in the thread mentioned assembling it with kids around, and often you're putting it together at a hectic time because you've just moved or need the furniture ready and the house clean before having guests, etc. Enough people have had these experiences that the meme is popular. I don't personally care for mayonnaise. I think the memes are popular precisely because mayonnaise is so popular. A lot of the anti-mayo memes I've seen complaining about mayonnaise are about finding it where you don't expect it or ordering sandwiches without it and still getting it. There are fewer memes ranting about less common ingredients like Buffalo sauce or hummus because you don't have to go out of your way to avoid those.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Yeah. It’s usually fairly straightforward and is pretty easy for small pieces. Something like a large dresser though, while perhaps not being hard, can be rather tedious to plow through.

pcrh 9y ago

IKEA assembly is trivial for most humans. But that is not the point of the article. The point of the article is that it is non-trivial for humans to make robots able to do what they can do easily themselves. The IKEA task was likely chosen because it is something many people have personal experience with, which makes for better public understanding and engagement with the underlying engineering work being displayed.