IKEA Effect

 

I worked so hard for this video that I should be given Best YouTuber of India award!  ...Dhishum…..- Let’s see what the IKEA effect is. Shall we? 

IKEA effect states that the more effort we put into something, the greater love we develop for that particular creation and we often overvalue that creation even when they are poorly constructed or designed. 

Now let’s see why it is called the IKEA effect. In 2011, Mr. Norton and his colleagues conducted an experiment at the IKEA store to find out how people value their products. 

To their surprise, participants were willing to pay 63% more for the self assembled furniture than the readymade ones. Moreover, participants were willing to pay even a higher price for the furniture they have to assemble completely on their own rather than just partially assembled furniture. 

The IKEA effect experiment changed the perception of product strategists and designers from looking at customers as merely "recipients of value" to more of "co-creators of value." 

A small story - Few years back, an IKEA ghost entered my soul and went on a creation frenzy. I built a Bamboo house at a ranch and a Kitchen drawer. Then, I created multiple products for artists from Easel, Artist aprons, to Frames, colors etc. I went on to establish a company called Rangari Studio Products. It never saw the light of the day as nobody was interested in my products. For me, they were extraordinary and fabulous products, for others, they were ordinary or even below average products.  

In the 1950s, In the US, Betty Crocker Brand added one extra step of adding eggs to the readymade cake mix powder so that making cake isn’t too easy for housewives and they also get the satisfaction of making a homemade cake. Listen…

And remember those fresh eggs added to the Betty Crocker Cake mixes help give that special Homemade goodness. Try Betty Crocker cake mixes and always make big, moist, fresh egg cakes. 

But let’s try to understand why do people value their creations more? This is mostly a combination of four things - Pride, Competence, Control and the Emotional attachment we develop while creating that creation and self created products allow us to do all of this. 

We want to take pride and boast about our creations to others. Improve our self confidence by portraying ourselves as capable and competent. Remain in control while creating so that we can do it the way we like it. And ofcourse all of this creates an emotional attachment to the product. 

Bowerbird creates these beautiful structures with blue objects, Pufferfish creates these amazing patterns, and Weaverbird creates these beautiful nests. Don’t we want to create at least furniture to impress someone special?

Products such as Origami sets, Lego, Coffee maker are some examples of physical products. In the digital world, Open source products such as Android, Linux, or Firefox are perfect examples of IKEA effect. Even Product design strategies such as creating folder structure, customized dashboards, computer themes, no code app creators, softwares such as Adobe Photoshop, or Adobe XD, are some of the examples. If you create your own portfolio site like I did using Google Sites, you are going to be more attached to it and more likely to maintain it regularly. 

But designing products so that others can create their own product experiences isn't all that easy. It is a high value and high risk strategy. It requires careful thought through product strategy and design. Let’s see how to strategize your product for an IKEA effect? 

1. Don’t force it - You heard me right! Don’t force an IKEA effect as a strategy if it is not suitable for your context. Remember, people do not always want to create things on their own but would rather use readymade once. For example, there is no point in asking people to create their own mobile apps on mobile phones. A little bit of customization is okay. 

2. Know your customers - It is absolutely critical that you know your customers very well. Especially if you are designing for IKEA effect. For example, If you are designing an application for cab drivers, don’t ask them to create anything. Neither they will have these skills nor they would be interested in creating anything themselves and use it. 

3. Please understand that customers are not designers. Design of the application should be done by you and your customers should only assemble or customize the design. This is not an excuse for not designing. One of our colleagues wanted our consumer app customers to create their own apps so we don’t have to do anything! How crazy is that? This is very dangerous and destined to fail as a product strategy.  

4. Fourth, decide the level of creation - Decide how much you would like your customers to create on their own, how much customization should be done, and how much readymade should be offered. For example, in a complex enterprise application, you probably want to give them a dashboard that you think would be suitable for them but also allow them to create their own dashboards. Whereas, secondary pages can be readymade with little or no customization. 

5. Provide default options so that they have something to start with. 

6. Sixth, Provide Templates - Provide templates so that they can choose the base that is more suitable for their context. For example, Google Sites gives us templates for various purposes. Portfolio, or Restaurant, Christmas Party etc. 

7. Make it extremely easy for them to create it. Get an expert designer who knows how to do it. When customers are not successful in building the product or it is too complicated, the IKEA effect disappears and it backfires, people may devalue or denounce your product for being too complicated. 

8. Test rigorously - Even NASA tests their rockets rigorously, they won’t you? Usability Tests only can tell you whether your design strategy is working or not. Conduct multiple Usability tests during stages of design and development. 

9. And last but not the least - Design easy to understand instructions. -  Design instructions in such a way that those are easy to comprehand. One of the main reasons why most of the IKEA furniture is easy to assemble is their easy to understand instruction manual. Of Course there are some exceptions too. Nowadays, Adobe, Windows and most of the IT companies are doing fantastic work in this area. Take an example of Adobe’s tutorials. 

In short, the IKEA effect is a very powerful behavioral economics principle that can be used to create attachment or love towards your products by your customers but it needs to be carefully designed.

 

I hope you liked my explanation on the IKEA Effect principle of behavioral economics. If yes, please press the Like button. Also subscribe to my channel and press the notification bell so that you will always get to know when I upload the next video. 

Keep creating and let others create! Bye bye.