[clairity]

ooshma is a good story teller and i too remember her lessons (and her determination) from this presentation at last year's female founders conference. =)

the one quibble i have with the otherwise insightful article on the ikea effect is the reasoning underlying the cognitive bias. i believe it is incomplete. not only does our self-esteem rise when participating in the creation of a product (however minor), but so too does the esteem we receive from others.

the article talks about the former effect, but not the latter, though the latter effect matters as much or more to most (all?) people. the examples presented (cake, ikea furniture, even gobble meals) tend to be enjoyed by others as much as the self. other people knowing that you expended non-trivial effort in making something they can then enjoy generates social value (whereas buying an equivalent cake doesn't generate much social value).

further, the example from the article about profile creation during sign up needs a caveat: the resultant profile really needs to seem novel to other people, not just be something that essentially looks and feels live every other profile, otherwise it won't create much in the way of the ikea effect.

[semiAI]

re: "but so too does the esteem we receive from others. the article talks about the former effect, but not the latter"

Really insightful. In my experience, if you give your user too much leeway to the point they actually not only have diminishing returns, but also become self-harming - that feedback loop can go awry.

What is necessary for the compounded effect is to make sure that your "IKEA" put-together item... actually looks pretty damn good... (with minimal effort by the user, that is).

It does create a sense of ownership, that sense of "I did that!"

The key is to provide enough inspiration and emotional investment that the user can get over the hump-of-learning a new tool.

Like signing up here, laughable but I get the point