Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias that can influence the outcome and perceived value of products to a big degree. People tend to place high value on products they partially have created. Hence, the name IKEA effect. It is derived from the Swedish furniture retailer famous for products that require to be assembled by the customers.
Products designed by IKEA and LEGO are great examples of this psychological effect. Designers must have the IKEA effect in mind when designing solutions and use it when appropriate.
The more the needs for customization and co-production are present in your target audience the more the IKEA effect is relevant for you as a designer. The effect can help you instill feelings of competence in the user when the task is completed successfully.
The IKEA effect will create stronger bond between the user and the product. The effort that users will put into completing the product to a complete state will transform into love for that product. The subjective value will be higher in comparison to a product that hasn't cost any effort.
It is important to point out that the IKEA effect is not about putting the effort be it small or big, it is more about the completion of the task. The IKEA effect is present when the user can enjoy the completed task and the product. If the product is disassembled soon after the assembling the effect is lost.
[...] People are willing to pay more for products they create than equivalent pre-assembled products. The general rule is the higher the contribution the higher the valuation is. Yet, if the effort required is too big or the contribution too small, people won't probably complete the task. The IKEA effect is possible only when the user actually completes the task.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @10:36AM (6 children)
Self assembly only works if the product iteslf actually fits together. Probably why most items are click together, but never have i felt satisfied fitting chipboard furniture together, feels more like fego.
Creative satisfaction comes from making something a little less obvious, this is likely why most blokes won't read the instructions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @11:11AM
Lego?
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday May 21 2017, @11:37AM (4 children)
I think it depends on the skill of the person. I do a lot of fabrication, which involves actually designing something , picking the material, and forming the material into what you want. I find that very satisfying, especially when it all fits together just as designed. I get a little bit of ecstasy when I do that.
As a result I don't find Ikea assembling particularly fulfilling anymore, more like therapeutic, something I do to unwind and relax and "take it easy", because I am just not the kind of person to sit and vegetate in front of a TV. I am too fidgety. Plus the nice thing about Ikea is you can modify it pretty easily if you need something specific, which I do quite a bit.
However "normal people" (those who never fabricated or built something custom) can get really excited when they assemble Ikea furniture. They will proudly show off what they "built" when I go round to see them. So I think for the average person Ikea does in fact have a positive bias.
I agree with the article. You feel it is worth more because you invested your time into it directly. Money is a very abstract concept, especially as for most people it is just digits on a web page, as is you working (putting time in) then getting paid later on. Then those digits reduce, and you end up with a finished good delivered to your doorstep. You don't feel part of the process, more like a high level manager, just making decisions.
This is physical, you buy pieces, and you put time and effort directly into it, and out pops a useful physical thing you can see, touch and show off about. That has a feeling of fulfillment and success about it.
Just my 0.02 cents on the matter.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday May 21 2017, @11:58AM (3 children)
ummmm... have you tried sitting at the back of it?
It even gets natural to vegetate if you pick an old CRT TV and, while at the back, you touch the high voltage wires.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday May 21 2017, @12:21PM (2 children)
I could give it a try, alas I have not had a TV since 2001 :-P
I do miss the old CRT TV's though. You could really have some fun with the components from the back of them. Especially the flyback transformers. Back when there was the mass switch to flat screen TV's, you found so many CRTs at the side of the road. Wish I had the means to scavenge them for parts at the time.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Wednesday May 24 2017, @02:19AM (1 child)
I still see discarded CRT TVs fairly regularly. I figure the supply must be getting pretty close to drying up though.
Unfortunately almost all the TVs I see out on the curb are 90's and 2000's models. The older ones are more fun to tinker with.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday May 24 2017, @10:18AM
Nice! I haven't seen a CRT in at least 5 years round here, I think they are all gone, because space is such a premium in the tiny flats in the area. At this point people have started throwing out old flat screen TVs (32 inch usually). I suspect something small like a PSU capacitor went and they would be a quick fix, but no real interesting parts in them, and I don't really have the time, inclination or interest to fix them. Also they are not worth much fixing and reselling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @12:30PM (3 children)
See subject.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 21 2017, @02:41PM (2 children)
-- https://gedkinsgmu.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/betty-crocker-first-lady-of-mass-culture/ [wordpress.com]
Boyd's essay:
A Creativity Lesson From Betty Crocker. Subtracting an essential element creates unexpected value.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inside-the-box/201401/creativity-lesson-betty-crocker [psychologytoday.com]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday May 21 2017, @04:40PM (1 child)
For those unfamiliar with this common anecdote (and who don't want to click on links), the gist of this story is that supposedly early cake mixes (with dried eggs, dried milk, just add water) didn't sell well. But Betty Crocker introduced the "just add an egg!" idea based on a team of psychologists who told them that women wanted to show they had made some contribution to cake-making. Along with this was a bunch of Freudian BS (which most of the pleasant anecdotes today fail to recount) about women "offering their eggs to their husbands" and such. Such was the state of psychology back then.
Anyhow, despite being recounted in numerous advertising and pop psychology sources, the anecdote is only sort of true [snopes.com]. What actually happened is that cake mixes were initially successful, but market growth flattened a bit in the late 1950s. Cake mix producers wanted to sell even more product, so they looked into why some women didn't use cake mixes -- and that supposedly produced the egg theory that led to Betty Crocker's success. Sales did go up, but sales also went up for Pillsbury, who didn't adopt the "add an egg" philosophy. (If anything, "add an egg" cake mixes did sell a bit better, because they actually tasted better with better texture.)
So what really lead to further growth in the cake mix market wasn't taste or the "add an egg" philosophy. Pre-WWII homemade cakes were generally very simple, particularly in presentation. In the 1950s, though, magazines increasingly encouraged an emphasis of "style over substance" -- elaborate colorful frosting, glazes, complex manipulation and shaping of layers, etc. Such cakes required a dependable and very consistent base; making cakes from scratch was less dependable given variance in ingredients, skill of the cook, etc. So, women increasingly shifted to cake mixes as a base as they adopted the 1950s attitude toward presentation.
To be sure, there was still a significant element of participation there, and one might argue that the emergence of cake mixes led to this emphasis on frosting and presentation as way for women to continue to contribute. But all this began even earlier than the "just add an egg" Betty Crocker campaign with all its psychological analysis. And NO, just cracking an egg didn't make women feel like they had "participated" and thus could feel proud of their kitchen achievement. Instead, that was accomplished through complex presentation alternatives that frequently took more time and effort than simply making a cake from scratch.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday May 21 2017, @04:53PM
And by the way, if you want a more accurate history of cake mix adoption and sales, you might see this account [bonappetit.com]. It goes even further toward debunking the role of the "just add an egg!" myth: as it notes, such mixes had been around for about 25 years before the innovation supposedly changed the industry.
A better analogy to the history of cake mixes would be those customers who make after-market modifications to things like IKEA products. There seems to be a whole culture online devoted to people pointing out how you can buy some cheap stuff from IKEA (or some other mostly prefabricated collection of parts) and then transform it into a something more cool for particular uses. And then you add personalized sanding, staining, and other finishing of wood, etc. The people who do this sort of thing not only seem to "bond" with their creations but love to post photos of what they did online. That's a lot more like the actual "cake mix" history.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Sunday May 21 2017, @12:33PM
When you succeed at one (trivial) thing, you may be even more susceptible to overestimating your abilities, see the "Dunning-Kruger Effect" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org] ).
Now you have an IKEA-completing-person, in a moment they think they can build a house. Lets hope it never rains ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @12:55PM (2 children)
Can I have discount if I bolt the steering wheel on my new car? This way I get the endorphins...(and the risk of handling the airbag).
How about if the seats are just tossed into the interior and I bolt them down?? (if you have ever had the seats out of a car, you probably have a feeling for how much they cut up the usable interior volume)
Was going to include the wheels/tires, but it would be hard to move the body around without them installed at the factory. Similar, I'd be willing to assemble the inside of the doors including windows (it's easy if the door panels are off), but then the interior would probably get wet/dirty during shipping.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday May 21 2017, @02:00PM (1 child)
Of course you can, if that is what tickles your fancy! And you will get a discount too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_car [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @07:19PM
Close, but I don't want a "kit car" -- these are woefully undeveloped cars and the owners are chasing problems all through assembly and during the life of the car. I want a fully developed car, with a real engineering and development staff behind it -- hundreds or thousands of engineers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fishybell on Sunday May 21 2017, @03:39PM (1 child)
This may explain part of the early excitement surrounding Linux.
It may also explain why most people aren't exactly willing to make the plunge: it's too hard to DIY it vs. just downloading (and possibly even paying for) a windows application. Every person I've converted to Linux it's been about utility: providing a platform for projects like XBMC and ZoneMinder that don't have Windows alternatives that win out on the effort-vs-cost ratio. Once they get one project under their belt, they come back excited to get help to learn more and more.
The old adage of giving a man a fish vs. teaching them to fish is very much at play here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @10:11PM
Perhaps 20 years ago, but these days most software you could possibly want is already in the repository and much easier to install than on Windows.
What keeps people from getting interested in Linux is that people continue to spread the misinformation about what things were like years ago as if it's still true. Which it's not. If anything, modern Linux distros are easier and less work than modern versions of Windows.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @04:12PM
Gnome UI is the anti-IKEA of user interfaces.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 21 2017, @06:39PM
It's simple, if you can make a gadget to do your bidding more exactly like you want it than the standard cookie cutter version that is glued shut. Well then that is what will be used.
And if you can extend it easily, that is not a negative.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @07:48PM
That explains why a vendor at work sold us a software package for 6 figures that comes with no sane defaults or capabilities. It must be the IKEA effect in action when users of the software have to cobble together even basic functionality using stone knives and bear skins.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Reziac on Monday May 22 2017, @05:49AM
....Linux.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.