The IKEA effect
Have you ever tried “Make Your Own Tacos”, where the tortillas, different sauces, cheese and veggies come separated, and you get to assemble these to make your final product? Or perhaps a deconstructed cocktail, where they hand you over its separate components and get you to mix the drink? (Thanks for making me pay for a drink you didn’t even make, btw.)
Droid Depot at the Walt Disney World Resort lets customers construct their very own droids, and pay a premium price for their own creations and customisation.
These companies are using what’s called “The IKEA Effect” here.
So, what is the IKEA Effect?
When people partially create a product, they tend to value it more than its ready-made counterpart. This perceived value of the product for the creator is primarily influenced by a cognitive bias called “The IKEA Effect” (since IKEA lets its customers assemble their own furniture).
A research titled ‘The “IKEA Effect”: When Labor Leads to Love’ conducted by Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely in 2011, demonstrated that people are willing to pay higher prices for products they assembled, than the people who get pre-assembled objects.
The key point here being incorporating manageable tasks that require low effort, and at the same time making the user feel like they contributed to a vast extent.
IKEA effect translated into the design
Drawing inspiration from the real world is something that designers have been doing and should continue to do so, to give out the most memorable and meaningful experience to the users.
And since users tend to value products more that they contributed to, and IKEA being the best real-world example for this, why not potentially apply this effect in designing digital products as well?
Digital products should be designed in a way that lets users put in some amount of effort or have a sense of customisation done by them, and at the same time, let them feel great about it.
This is one of the powerful tools that can be employed for user retention.
For instance, during onboarding, Drift allows users to customise their dashboard, set an avatar, and choose icons, which proved to be better than their older flow.
Knit in some friction for good
Side note: Letting users put in some effort is a powerful tool not only for a higher valuation of the product but can also create some vital friction which could be necessary before some crucial decision-making steps.
User potentially would not want the power of making a payment or deleting subscribers in a frictionless manner, they would want a confirmation prompt before proceeding to avoid some serious mistakes.
For instance, we would want an “Are you sure?” prompt before deleting subscribers in MailChimp (here, actually type in “PERMANENTLY DELETE”) or a confirmation prompt before making any payment.
Don’t forget it’s all about balance
User attention and retention is the most important aspect for a product, and to keep the users engaged, it is crucial to have just the right amount of task difficulty. Remember, for the IKEA effect to do its magic, the user must successfully complete the task. If the effort required is too complicated or too easy, users would probably lose interest and wouldn’t have the motivation to reach the finish line!
All in all, for this DIY format to take flight, the individual components along with their ease of assembly should be definitive of the end goal. A “Make Your Own Taco” would taste bad if the ingredients provided taste bad themselves.
The Canvs Editorial team comprises of: Editorial Writer and Researcher- Paridhi Agrawal, the Editor’s Desk- Aalhad Joshi and Debprotim Roy, and Content Operations- Abin Rajan
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