[Springtime]

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.

[wongarsu]

I have yet to experience (in person) anybody expressing frustration about putting together IKEA furniture. The closest thing are some friends who have expressed bewilderment at "the internet's" view that IKEA furniture might be difficult to assemble.

[thirdsun]

That's my experience as well.

IKEA furniture is pretty much designed to be assembled by anyone. And that makes me wonder whether the "IKEA" effect as described in the original link even applies. I agree with the general observation - understandably people value things they created, things that took effort. While this applies to that old coffee table you restaurated carefully, I really doubt this is true for the cheap IKEA console you're pretty much expected to assemble without problems.

[weaksauce]

IKEA furniture is not "hard" to assemble per say. It's annoying and frustrating because the qc on hole alignment and how well they tap the holes is lacking. Coupled with cheap veneered particle board lowering the overall build quality.

I am pretty handy and have a ton of nice tools and have worked with my hands building things for a living for about 6 years or so and a software developer otherwise.

I actually just had to "fix" a crappy ikea chest of drawers because the particle board popped out of the dado in the rear piece so the drawer would rub on the next drawer down. Some cheap brackets were installed as a temp fix but a real fix would be to install a better bottom board that flexes less and to glue it in place rigidly.

[Springtime]

Agreed about the build quality. Something to consider about assembly is also the circumstances of the installation. Was talking with a person recently who together with an engineer assembled one of the Pax systems with the large sliding rail doors in a space that had literally about a half an inch gap between the top and the ceiling. Because of this it ended up mostly being assembled upright, not to mention the task of affixing the upper clips in the narrow space at the top to hold the slider for the rather hefty dual doors. So at times there can more factors involved with the frustration than something like the instructions themselves.

[Moru]

I usually put an angle bracket (?) at the back of the drawer where it usually gets loose. Screw it in with bolts from back and bottom to keep them together.

[vosper]

I've never been really frustrated, but I was amazed how long it took me to assemble a big sectional couch. I had watched a timelapse of someone else doing it and thought there was no way it would take me 4 hours. It did.

But the couch was awesome and totally worth the effort. I'd do it all again :)

[bjelkeman-again]

I assembled a clothes cupboard with sliding doors. Consisted of hundreds of pieces. I normally have no issues with Ikea stuff, but gee what a pain this one was. It took four-five hours. Have since discouraged multiple people from buying it by just describing the process.

[ivanhoe]

well, honestly, assembling prefabricated furniture parts is not really my idea of a productive or fun use of my time. It's easy to do, but can take a lot of time for bigger pieces, and doing it makes you painfully aware that the quality of the product is not that great (to put it nicely). Unlike building something yourself, you have zero control of the process or the outcome, it's really just about saving some money at the cost of your time. Maybe frustration is a hard word for that, but to me it's not enjoyable activity at all. And I otherwise love woodworking and manual labour, so it's not just me being lazy.

[praneshp]

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.

[semi-extrinsic]

There's definitely a split in society on whether IKEA furniture is easy or hard to assemble. It being hard (albeit for a blind person) was used as a funny point in Deadpool.

Personally, I subscribe to the school of thought that says IKEA furniture should be assembled only after the instructions pamphlet has been burned. Needless to say, my better half disapproves.

An important corollary in this doctrine is that IKEA should go all-out Unbraco or Torx on their screws; wretched be those who advocate Philips heads in any application!

[thirdsun]

> There's definitely a split in society on whether IKEA furniture is easy or hard to assemble.

Would those people that consider Ikea furniture hard to assemble be more comfortable with other furniture? My guess is that they would encounter the same problems with any kind of furniture since, in my opinion, Ikea's is actually rather simple. I think it's more of a case of people not knowing how to drive complaining about how difficult to use Fords are.

[ethbro]

> An important corollary in this doctrine is that IKEA should go all-out Unbraco or Torx on their screws; wretched be those who advocate Philips heads in any application!

Aren't most main fasteners in IKEA furniture shear-loaded though? The last assembly I can remember doing was exclusively the post & socket type connectors in pre-drilled holes.

And if you're not actually torquing a fastener then Philips+ seems a bit overkill.

[semi-extrinsic]

IIRC most of the Philips stuff I've encountered (and cursed) on IKEA furniture were for attaching small things; the main fasteners are usually good (unbrako).

[Moru]

I read somewhere that IKEA is slowly moving to snap-fastening solutions but I haven't seen any of them yet.

[zerocrates]

IKEA screw heads are often Pozidriv in my experience, they just don't tell you that.

[semi-extrinsic]

Sure, but only slightly less awful than Philips.

[stephenkais]

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.

[mattbrewsbytes]

You have to compare IKEA furniture to other DIY assemble furniture. Some manufacturers are catching up but IKEA's instructions are super simple to follow and are correct.

I've had multiple pieces of DIY furniture where there were obvious errors and you could tell instructions were translated, sometimes very poorly.