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Why We Love Things We Build Ourselves
RichDiesal writes "The IKEA Effect refers to the tendency for people to value things they have created/built themselves more than if made by someone else – in fact, nearly as much as if an expert with much greater skill had created the same item. Is this the reason that open source software proponents are so 'enthusiastic' about their products while the general market resists them – because those proponents had a hand in developing them?"
this is most assuredly true. I have noticed this tendency in myself over the years and have, at times, been hard pressed to see the other side of the coin.
IT Admins Group: Where you decide the content
Yes.
Sure, the world has it's share of deadbeats but there are plenty of parents out there who would do anything to watch their kids succeed. Isn't that what an application is to its developer?
Maybe its something else though. I know that when i was going through my programming lessons I really wanted to get things done perfectly. Sure, the lessons from the texts were cookiecutter, but i went on to play with the concepts learned from the text. I played with my own small applications and wrote features I thought would be interesting or necessary. It wasn't anything big. It would never be a huge success, but it was mine.
This is the reason why I think musicians should release their music in a multitrack format. Imagine the possibilities for remixing. Such an attitude would fit perfectly in the do-it-yourself youtube culture that we are living in now.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
are also more likely to appreciate worthless chipboard so it makes sense that after they put together a worthless disgrace of a table that to gloss over their pathetic nature they react as if they built the empire state building all by their very own selves.
I recently created this piece of css myself:
section#a2footer.grid_24 {
display: none;
}
And I love it! Bye bye slashdot tweet/fb/+1 buttons
A person who has fashioned an item from the start will implicity trust it in operation until proved otherwise, because they saw it's construction. This is true of any tool in any era. That trust is extended to "experts" generally because those are individuals whom other people you trust (that have tools provided by said expert) have recommended for that same "the tool works for me" reason.
Quite why we need to ascribe a brand name to this offends my sensibilities. Not everything requires a brand.
...the most outspoken OSS proponents are in fact the developers of OSS, to the extent that other users are just background noise? If regular users are so silent, then this must mean that the exponential spread of OSS must be due in fact to the developers. Ergo, developers are in fact brilliant marketers. A prime example of this would be the GNU Image Manipulation Program, which succeeds because of its sexy acronym.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
And note the general market is coming around, yo.
For me at least the economic element of building something myself is the driver in the first place. I put in place my kitchen because I was capable and I'd rather have spent the money a fitter would have cost on something else. If I'd been offered the same kitchen same price, fully professionally fitted I'd have taken it.
I could build certain electronic items, however the cost of the components vs the premade version makes it uneconomic. Even at the higher level of this, I used to be able to put together a PC from parts, these days I wouldn't bother.
I'm not sure the open source stuff works, the vast majority of open source users don't have an involvement in writing the software, and the software is largely written by experts anyway. Perhaps there is something in the idea of user customisation, tweaking it to make it just so, but I suspect a large amount of users go for an out of the box configuration of and just add additional software they are interested in. That's no real different to a windows user.
The main reasons for me and people I know are
1) cost effectiveness
2) the option to modify software as needed
3) no fear of lock-in
Also many 'enthusiastic' open source software proponents have never even looked at the code. In academic environments people write/use open source programs without giving much thought to who wrote something. The main points are usability and time requirements. If something is usable and can be used quickly then we use it no matter who wrote it.
I usually like Open Source software but the reason has very little to do with the source being available.
What I really like is projects that are made on hobby basis without an economic driving force behind them.
This is because those things are usually made to solve a problem and do it well.
Once a project goes commercial marketing enters the picture and suddenly the application gets a splash-screen for no apparant reason. Then the buttons grow and become bulky. The interfac will be reworked to be "userfriendly" which is marketing speak for "easy to demonstrate a simple function but if you actually are going to use it you will no longer be able to find the functions you are looking for" or possibly "friendly for beginner but not for users"
I am probably not representative for open source proponents since I don't mind closed source on an ideological basis.
If you build an open source project, you make sure it works for you....
Its all about egos, I've discussed this many times with devs who can't "see" what I'm trying to point out - but who'd build something which they couldn't use / understand / like?
They think its brilliant because it does exactly what THEY expect - however their expections are wildly different to what the outside world expects.
For example I was discussing how to eject a CD on OSX the other day with someone - he couldn't understand the problem with the idea that dragging the CD to the recycle bin isn't something I (A realitively pro computer user) would concider for trying to eject the disk. For him it seemed so simple, so "normal". In open source you find the same, developers make decisions which work for them, but when a user can't understand why, because they haven't gone through the whole process the developer went with the attitude is "well it doesn't work for me".
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Curiosity, egotism/arrogance, self righteousness, self-importance, some form of altruism, hope, boredom come quickly to my mind.
Training customers to accept cheap shoddy goods
If you can't tell the difference between something built by somebody that has more skill than you do, so there is no reason not to be proud of yourself. For entry to moderate level DIY or craft, the main difference between an amateur and a professional is the productivity: i.e. how much time it takes the professional and his consistency in result.
For high level stuff, that is another matter. I can only talk personally, but since I have started metal smithing as a hobby, I value a lot less the average piece you can buy all assembled (not even talking about the mass produced shit). However, I began to be amazed by what master craftman can do. ( and as collateral damage, I have paid price for piece that I would not have considered reasonable before )
Of course we love what we make even if it sucks, but interesting choice of words. "Market" refers to people buying stuff, but OSS isn't necessarily for sale. Nor do people advertise or "sell" as do those who cater towards "markets". Red Hat sells service, not OSS.
So, "resist" is not the reason why OSS isn't selling. The problem is more about the lack of sales and marketing. People need to be told what to buy as with Apple with great ads, or get cornered into it as with Windows pre-installed in everything.
The ecosystem of OSS is what is resisting OSS becoming a market.
So I suppose the twit who dubbed this "the Ikea effect" never heard of this neckbeard from the 19th century and his theory of alienation?
Why We Love Things We Build Ourselves
Didn't they call that the Oppenheimer syndrome?
I don't place much value on my IKEA type furniture that I assembled myself. Also, I don't think I could call that "creating" something. However, I do highly value all the open source software I use, which to be honest, I didn't lift a finger to help create, maintain, or improve.
Of course I'm enthusiastic about using software I've contributed to, but remember that the reason I spend time contributing to them is because I was using them in the first place. There's other free software I have nothing to do with, which I'm still very fond of, mostly because they're constantly improving for free (with a few arguable exceptions in Ubuntu's case).
They touched a bit on whether or not the creations could be customized. The article stated that the build value was higher regardless of whether or not customization was possible. This is why they used Ikea products, non-alterable, and lego structures, alterable.
For an comparison to open source software projects, it would be interesting to see the perceived values of the two pre-built items, one which as configurable, and one which is not. For example, a pre-built piece of furniture made from pieces which could be reconfigured to produce a modified structure, versus a pre-built structure with pieces that were permanently joined together.
This is something that is considered by people choosing to rent or buy something. Like an apartment in which you are not allowed to paint the walls. Even if an end user of a software product does not contribute to the build, there is value in knowing the end user may hire someone to make alterations on his or her behalf.
That being said, this study is spot on. Putting your own blood, sweat, and tears into any project increases its value, at least to you.
1) Most OSS enthusiasts cannot code. It's unfortunate, but true.
2) The study cited is not publicly available. Psychology studies are often very flawed in various ways and until it becomes freely available and we can be sure that many more eyes, also (or should I say especially) outside the field, have had a look at it.
There is also something asinine about citing a closed paper in an OSS-related article.
I hate assembling IKEA stuff but it's is still much easier than trying to move a prebuilt furniture to the room. First you have to pay extra for delivery as it doesn't fit into a car. Then you need to rearrange your home to make way for it. After that you need two people, who, in perfect unison, try to move it through the house without hitting any lamps or mirrors, painfully forcing it through every door. And if one of your doors is too small, when then you are out of luck.
As far as I can tell, we're hard-wired to derive pleasure from independence and self-reliance, probably because it's an advantageous trait in evolutionary terms.
Many years ago, I was into vintage Volkswagens for a while. As anyone who has owned one of these beasts can tell you, they're extremely unreliable and require more or less constant maintenance to keep running, and unless you're prepared to do it yourself, you'd better have a lot of money to hand to the dwindling number of mechanics who know how to work on the damn things. I had never worked on cars before or been particular interested in doing so, but I adapted to necessity, and after a while, I got good enough at it to keep my ancient VW running most of the time.
On one hand, it was annoying to have the thing break down by the side of the road, but on the other, there was a really quite profound sense of satisfaction in being able to open the engine compartment, figure out what was wrong, fix it, and pull back into traffic. In practical terms, this was pointless, of course -- my time and money would have been better spent on buying something more reliable, which I eventually did -- but the emotional payoff surprised me with its intensity. I've heard similar sentiments come from hobbyists of all kinds, farmers, craftsmen, etc.
All that said, I'm not sure it's the main factor in OSS evangelism. The type of person who programs for fun is generally attracted to exploring complexity and mastering it, and the parallel seems to be more like what puzzle fans of all kinds get out of their hobby. When someone tries to convince someone else to use a complex (if powerful) tool over the droolproof commercial product they're currently satisfied with, it has a lot more in common with trying to turn them on to a favorite hobby than with an expression of self-reliance.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Every man loves the whiff of his own farts.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
The overwhelming proportion of OSS users, and even OSS enthusiasts, never contribute to OSS, so the whole premise of the claim seems flawed to me.
Virtually serving coffee
Quite right. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a damn good song reduced to crap by some muppet "DJ" who should have stuck to spinning the disks rather than trying to make them.
I hand-crafted this comment all by myself and it's worth more than any other on the page. Of course, all the other commenters will disagree...
I agree with the IKEA affect, at some level, but believe people are wrong about what it means. Just because someone has worked on an open source project does not mean they have rose colored glasses and expect it will solve every problem more efficiently than another alternative. In my view, it means that they have a more sophisticated view of what the project actually can do, in part because it is open, and are ready to share that information.
I own an open source company that deals with Drupal and CiviCRM. It is not uncommon to be in a conversation where someone is telling me of course I think Drupal is the greatest thing out there, and assumes I am not well versed in anything else. I can go on about the virtues of Drupal all day long, but that is besides the point. I have an in-depth understanding of Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla (and it's predecessor Mambo), Plone, Xoops, and a number of other open source tools.
I have contributed to each of these platforms at one time or another and understand the way they work in great detail. Compared to Sharepoint, where I don't understand the internals, I am not going to have a lot to say. If you come to me asking what you should be using, I am going to talk about Drupal, but am also going to ask what you currently use.
There are parallels with the automotive industry that can help explain what is going on there.
My mechanic actually makes cars. He purchases transmissions, chassis, all the component parts you need to assemble them. He has a large lot, looks almost like a junkyard on the outside, and he keeps a fleet of jumkers around to restore them and sell them off. On the inside, his shop is a paradise of tools, diagnostic machines and the like.
His obsession with cars extends to his personal life. His house is filled with cardboard boxes that contain custom parts he picked up because he knows what he can do with them. He can explain them in terms of torque, output and a lot of other factors that go beyond my ability to appreciate a car and what it does.
My neighbor is also someone I would call a car guy and drives a german supercar. It was top of the line when he bought it. I mention the car to the mechanic, and he can tell me about every part in it and why it is good or bad. He has strong opinions about the car and why it is poorly designed, with several prognostications about parts that will die prematurely due to flaws.
When I speak to my neighbor about it, all he knows is he has an expensive car. that impresses people. He can talk about all the luxury lines and his knowledge of the component parts extends to the makeup of the interior, the warmth of the seats, the placement of cup holders, and the like. What he really cares about is not under the hood, it's how the car looks to other people.
If you put the question to both of these kind of people about what kind of car to drive, you are going to get very different answers because one understands how cars are built, the other understands what the car means to other people who see it. There is a qualitiative difference there people don't always appreciate between different types of afficinados.
That said, there are ideological zealots out there who will always tell you to use a platform for it's own sake. I don't always get the sense these people always know what they are talking about, and generally get the feeling they cling to one platform due to their ignorance of the benefits of others. They have a tendency to become very defensive when confronted and make very bold assertions in the absence of facts.
This later class of people generally don't have much to do with how the platform is built. They tend to be the ones who are proponents of the platform and have strong opinions based on their participation in the community. While they can be fun to spend time with, there are situations where you get sick of being around them. To be candid, there are a lot of people in open source communities who are like this, and I think that's where the confusion comes from.
But don't mistake them for the people who actually love open source and understand it's benefits and drawbacks in comparion to other platforms.
Women make children and give them birth.
Men cannot, but they find various ways to indirectly compensate for that gap.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Computers only do a very few things that are really different from each other. During the past 30 years I've seen the same things developed over and over and over again. The IKEA effect is strong in every organisation I've ever worked in, at least as much in commercial software as in FOSS, and is the reason for 80% of software development in my estimation. Everyone thinks they can build things better than anyone else and everyone insists that their own solution is better than anything else 'out there'.
Korma: Good
In my experience few blue-collar workers take any pride in their work anymore so if I at least have a clue how to do something, the result will be much better if I (after extensive googling) do it myself instead of let somebody else do it - albeit it takes me so much longer that it's certainly not cost-efficient. One trick I try to use, though, when I take my bike for maintenance is that since I used to be a real cycling enthusiast is to exchange a few words about maintenance and especially say that whilst the guy is the professional that knows a lot more than I do, I have done enough maintenance myself to know a good job when I see it. So far, it has in my experience yielded better results. Ideally I'd know a lot more about all sorts of work so I could do the same every time I need something done.
This has been around forever. And yes, I value things I built myself more than stuff other built. I'm sure that also golds true to most people here.
Why? Well you know example how much work went into it, blood, sweat, and tears... how many cuts, splinters smashed fingers etc.
its one reason a lot of people do their own work on their cars.. yeah its a pain sometimes (timing belt in a pt cruiser = want to kill the engineers) but knowing you did it gives a sense of pride. Just like the deck I build, and later the wrap around deck extension. Putting in all that time and work under the summer sun wasn't easy but I did it and it turned out great. Had I hired a company or someone else to do it, the work of giving them a check or cash just isn't the same and in ways reduces it to a throw-away object (doesn't always hold true with the throw away part.. such as the larger, more expensive deck and extension, but for furniture and such that mostly use MDF or other "non-real" wood)
Plus building it yourself gives it character.
It is funny how some people keep repeating that "the market resists open source" while open source software is taking over bigger and bigger chunks of the market. Currently open source absolutely dominates web server operating systems, and web server software. It mostly dominates web application databases and is invading in the territory of other databases. It is on the way of dominating embedded operating systems including cell phones. It dominates new programming languages.
So yeah, we do not have desktop domination yet, but open source is doing quite well and it is constantly encroaching on new sectors.
Because without opensource, IE6 is all you would have. Love it, it is the only way.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
People value what they spend time doing more than what they don't? Social scientists have been saying that for a long time before IKEA existed. It's why organizations ask you to do something small for them - such as tell your friends about a fundraiser - because you will value the org more because you did something yourself (and probably do more in the future.)
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I love building my own stuff, more than most /.ers. Anything electronic in the house is done my yours truly. As is most cooking. Bicycles I build myself. I even build by own car and I even persuade the dealer to allow me do so.
Building your own stuff is great when your labour results in having stuff finished as it's supposed to be. And here's where IKEA just isn't worth the effort. After huge amounts of labour you almost always wind up with particle board stuff. Ugly, without any personality whatsoever to it and heavy as lead. Ever tried rearranging average IKEA furniture? Ever moved house with IKEA furniture?
A couple of years ago I wanted a sideboard and went through all the alternatives. I decided for Italian design furniture that was double the price of similar IKEA stuff. But altogether I got a much better deal. The sideboard looks stunning, it is made of real wood, it was delivered to my home and was installed by competent people.
An acquaintance of mine with a very comfortable job -he earns shit loads of money- thinks he's a bit of a geek because he buys his furniture at IKEA's. His wife absolutely loathes the protestant furniture, which one way or another is never finished perfectly -unaligned panels and doors, the works. How are you going to die happily when your bank account is full to the brim and you own IKEA furniture?
To me IKEA furniture does not make any sense and certainly does not make you a geek. It shows you generally have no taste and that you are quickly beguiled into buying apparently cheep stuff without considering the bigger picture.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Exactly what are you smoking that makes you think only showing an action once the user has already started it is intuitive?
To help you to understand: If I instruct you to hit the red button and there is only a green button but the green button turns red when you hit it, you are going to complain about that button and me a lot.
UI design mistakes are pretty common, as a designer you try to be original but forget that other people might not have the same mindset as you. It is very sad but either you are pushing things and upsetting people, or keeping people comfortable but always staying the same.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Read about the philosophy behind the free software movement, you'll see that the motivation is not IKEA effect: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
I think a major barrier to the uptake of OSS in general is training. Most high schools teach MS Office, Flash, and Visual Studio instead of their open counterparts. People like to use what they're familiar with. They may not even know that an OSS alternative is available, let alone that OSS even exists.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Interesting. I'm building an arcade cabinet right now. I have some limited skills working with wood, but by no means am I carpenter. I debated buying a kit, but could not find one that I was happy with. So I'm building from scratch.
I have been proceeding very slowly and teaching myself new skills everytime there is something I want to do, but have not done before. I am *very* happy with the results, and there is absolutely no question that I value this piece of work far more than if I had just purchased it. In fact, I've estimated that considering the time and labor I've put into it, I would need to sell it at at least $10,000 to break even. This is far more than I think anyone would be willing to spend; but it is what I think it is "worth".
On the other hand, this cabinet is highly customized. And perhaps this is the the more practical reason why I value it so highly. It's true that I wouldn't pay $10,000 for a "stock" arcade cabinet like the one I built. But if I had gone to a master woodworker and stood over his shoulder directing him to do all of the major and minor tweaks that I did, ask him--mid stream--to throw away assemblies he had done and re-do them in a different way (because I changed my mind after seeing what it looked like), and to have him overbuild and overfinish it in ways users would never see or appreciate; yeah, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if he charged me at least $10,000.
So yes, I think we tend to value things we produce ourselves more highly than those built by others. However, for me in particular, when I really think about it, the reason is less about self-love than it is about customization--and even small customization can have tremendous value if that's the thing that you *need* to make the thing "perfect" for you. The thing I like so much about Open Source is that I can go into it and make those little tweaks that make the software do exactly what I want. A good example of this is Atari800, one of the emulators that I use in the cabinet. I really like this emulator, but it had some annoying (to me) minor issues that made it less than perfect for my application of it. So I contributed fixes for these things to the project. So now my project is perfect. And I value that a lot.
Sure, probably a little bit. You build a shoddy little app and you might have an irrational affinity for it even in the face of substantially more functional stuff. Though when you 'build' something (not assemble, as I would characterize IKEA stuff I've seen), you naturally tailor it precisely to your needs, so it generally isn't quite so irrational. The presumption that the market 'resists open source' is FUD/flamebait.
The question is how do the popular open source projects get there. The answer is that generally commercial products are built using a certain model involving marketing, project managers,testers who frequently don't understand the life of the customer, customers with little to no ability to influence the program, architects who rearely, if ever, touch code, and coders "just doing their job". In some cases this works well or at *least* won't be any better in open source land due to various factors. However, a successful open source project includes has the line blurred between intended endusers, test, and development. This means the users get *precisely* what they wanted when things are done. Even if they are not doing a lot of development, they'll participate in discussions on their favorite feature and steer the conversation correctly whenever they see someone misunderstanding. It's the same basic principle as a designed by-and-for-yourself project, but on a larger scale in a healthy community.
In commercial projects, there is a lot of signal loss as their requirements are taken down by someone not really understanding their needs, being distilled further into a short bullet point list of product requirements that ditches any semblance of the subtleties inherent in the requests, which is in turn interpreted and tested by a group who never uses the product for production and never talks to the customer, and then released to a customer who thinks "what the hell is this and what did it have to do with my requests?".
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Just because you made it yourself doesn't mean it's worse than the proprietary alternative. I'm using the Volti volume control applet in my task bar. Yes, I contributed to it. I'm using it not because of the pride of having contributed to it, but because now that it's patched, it does what I need it to. I've also written HD24tools, of which I *am* proud. That has little to do with me having written it, and more with what I've actually accomplished by doing so: I've got about 3500 users in 70 countries, running a mix of Windows/Mac/Linux, and the owners of the proprietary solution recommend my software over their own. I'd hardly call that being resisted by the market. It just so happens that my software solves a few problems that the proprietary software does not.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
To me it has always gone the other way - I only bother contributing to the projects I'm already enthusiastic enough about to invest my time into.
All questions seem to be answered here already.
For me personally, I make things myself when I cut costs by doing so.
I couldn't care less if some other person did it for me if it was cheaper and of the same quality, however this is rarely the case.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
The IKEA effect? Are you serious?
I'm from a poor background where we always had cheap crappy furniture we bought at [insert department store] and put together ourselves, this also continued for a bit into my adulthood until I had my career going, and at no point have I ever taken pride in that stuff, and I certainly never valued it more than good hand made furniture.
Is this really happening? Are people really excited that they put pegs into side B and tightened down the lock nut?
Man I think you have to have come from a well off background to think that way in the first place. Either that or this is an entirely made up thing.
Sigs are awesome huh?
For some people, DIY projects help satisfy their Neitzschean will to have power over themselves and their surroundings.
Open source I'd say it is they ignore their flaws. It is getting better but Gnome, KDE etc used to be really flaky. The cool features they advertised on each version would be so unstable as to be unusable (at least in the sense of something you'd put infront of your non-technical boss and expect not to here "get this crap off my computer"), and also pretty typically a pretty ugly GUI (Ubuntu Brown anyone?). I can't count how many times I've talked to a open source guy and said this program is a real piece of crap, it is about half way from being useful I don't get why it is released etc. To get the reply 'Oh but it is free, what did you expect you didn't pay for it so don't complain, would you rather give $X to company Y etc'. Free doesn't excuse laziness. If it isn't good enough that someone would pay for it (the bar is pretty low if you look at some of the commercial software out there) it should still be Beta, not in a production distribution system etc.
Lastly what really pisses me off is when something is say 75% good and 25% junk that is often when the developers decide to move on to something else. For commercial software there is an incentive to fix the problems because people come saying 'I'd by it but this needs to work first' not so with free software (I'm equating it with Open Source because the vast majority of Open Source is free). I'm guilty of it too, things I code on for fun I often work on until I prove I can do what my idea was and then stop. Programmed a chess game, programmed Battleship etc, I didn't care to polish it I just wanted to learn a new language/api and do a bit of fun logic. The problem is in the OS community often this crap gets published in the wild and any criticism becomes well if you don't like it you can fix it yourself. I have a life and can't be fixing everyone else's crappy code, my time is worth say $1 a minute to my employer why would I give up that $1 to work on somebodies fun project that might just be a program that would be useful to me but not a program that is interesting (in a development sense) to me?
The same can be said about commercial software developers. Go ahead...find one company that doesn't say that the software they created is the best tool for the job it's designed for.
The only difference is the general market doesn't 'resist' them. I'd say the general market doesn't 'resist' open source software either...most just don't know about it, or just don't want to put in the time/effort to use it. When any given open source software is appropriate for a particular task, is easy to setup and use, and someone is present to advocate for it, it probably would stand just as much of a chance as any commercial software. But that last ingredient is largely missing in most circumstances.
Alt-PrintScreen copies an image of the active window (ie the whole message box, including title and icons) to the clipboard. Then paste into e-mail, or WordPad or whatever. PrintScreen alone will copy the entire screen - which can sometimes be useful for context
How many out there remember Heathkits? I guess you could call it that theIKEA effect on steroids. Back in the 70's I built my own Heathkit TV. I thought it was the best performing TV set I'd ever seen, and we did look in the stores at sets before buying that one. Many people built their own stereo receivers, portable radios (me too), and television sets from kits by Heath.
Then there was this guy on PBS with a show called the "New Yankee Workshop". Norm Abrams also wrote a few books on furniture construction and offered plans to all of the projects he built on the TV show. I bought some basic wood working power tools (table saw, drills, router, etc) and learned how to use them thanks to Norm's "instruction". I build a number of small furniture items including two chests of drawers that were based on a project from the NYWS. Those two chests are (IMHO) better constructed than anything I could buy (REAL WOOD instead of particle board or cardboard and limited use of plywood).
If you don't want to make your own from scratch, or bolt it together from IKEA there is always "Wood You". Wood You stores sell assembled furniture that is un-finished. They provide you with the materials to fine sand, stain or paint, and finish the product. I've gotten several pieces of furniture from them, and they are quite nice. The money saved on not finishing them allows Wood You to use better materials in construction (REAL WOOD!).
My company can't use software that isn't maintained and supported by a "reliable" owner. By reliable I mean we must be able to sue them if it does not perform according to agreement. We do use some open source on stand alone systems, but we will never be able to get it through our system maintainers departments for any of our networks in production.
I never got that, IKEA's stuff is cheap, and most designs are cool. IKEA is by far the most bang for your buck.
The article mentions that cake mix didn't sell in the 50s until they changed it to require the cook to add an egg. The claim is the labor of adding the egg made the result more pleasing. But this ignores the plain fact that you can still get pancake mix with or without the need to add an egg - and the kind that requires a fresh egg tastes better, because a fresh egg tastes better. It's the same difference as between scrambling a fresh egg and reconstituted eggs.
So this whole thing is premised on being insensible to quality. The assumption is that the all-in-one cake mix is just as good, which is an advertising claim, not the truth.
When it comes to aesthetic appreciation of built objects, the experience of construction is itself a dimension of aesthetic appreciation, which conveys real knowledge of form beyond mere appreciation of a finished, static object. Having experienced that dimension, you can no more set it aside than you can the smell of food that's now in your mouth. To do a test where you pretend people can set that aside and claim the results are science is dumb.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Reminds me of an ex-colleague who said his hobby is "building furniture". I thought "Wow! A real craftsman!" until I found out that his definition of building furniture is buying stuff from Ikea and assembling it.
I didn't have the heard to tell him that his efforts would fall under the "cheap, low-skilled labor" category in third world countries. He seemed genuinely proud of the furniture he "built".
Well yeah, it's pretty much an extrapolation of the "not built here" mentality. In business, it's a anti-pattern. An excuse to have some home-brew encryption. But as far as aesthetics and appreciation, hell yeah I prefer the things I made myself. Even if it's uglier. Sometimes even if it doesn't work as well.
If you have to ask why, you're getting into some fundamental psychology/sociology that's really eye-opening to professors and mind-blowingly obvious to everyone else.
I like the things I make because I make 'em the way I like 'em.
... and I'm building one myself. One of these babies right here!
People get a sense of accomplishment from making things. That provides a psychological boost.
That's all there is to it.
Of course making things isn't the only way to get a sense of accomplishment, but making things does create a physical object that re-enforces that good feeling whenever we see/use it.
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"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Everyone thinks they can build things better than anyone else and everyone insists that their own solution is better than anything else 'out there'.
Yes! This is the 'Not Invented Here' effect. It's crippled the development team I'm currently on. Not only do they believe it's more efficient to develop an in house bug tracking system, but they don't even let it do bug tracking. Don't get me wrong, it's got a great interface for management (look at all these graphs and numbers), but the developer facing side is CRAP and makes it more work to keep track of issues/tasks/problems/ than a raffle box of scraps of paper.
Even worse, because each project is only worked on by a single developer, none of us learn from each other and each application is done differently. The result of this is that when a developer moves on, all their apps get butchered by a variety of new developers until 'it's not maintainable' at which point it gets a rewrite by... another lone developer.
Of course it also doesn't help that they have an insane love of javascript for operations which are normally performed statically. ie: they use javascript, not as an adjunct to improve the application's interface, but to replace the operation of existing html elements. Heaven forbid a user be able to open a link in a new window.
IKEA is more comparable to desklets or plasmoids (or whatever the KDE applets are called these days), though. The basics are done already, so its appeal is accessibility and ease. The real DIY "open source" furniture is more like this stuff. Anyone can do it with simple tools and the right materials, but it still takes some effort. When it's easier to start a project, a steady increase in required effort builds a reluctance to let the initial investment go to waste. The trouble is biting off more than one can chew from the start. I think that is often the case with FOSS.
My program is my best friend.
It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.
Congress must act now! I propose an immediate ban on some-assembly-required furniture. With fast action, the IKEA disease will only exist in history books.
[Re: to an extent] this is most assuredly true.
...hence the inherent love a mother typically feels for her [self-built] child(ren).
To
Most of their bookshelves and cabinets and many of their dressers and drawers are particleboard. The extra-thick bookshelf components are actually cardboard honeycomb with laminate.
Yes, there are a selection of products made of solid wood, mostly tables, chairs, and benches. (i.e. stuff that sees harder use) Most of the stained stuff is pine, which dents if you look at it funny. Some of it is birch/beech/oak, which can be decent.
Let's be realistic. Ikea furniture is designed to be disposable. It's not going to be around two hundred years from now. I agree with you though that there is other stuff that is even worse.
If you want to see high quality flat-pack furniture, check out http://www.greendesigns.com/ No, I don't own any of their stuff or work for them. Yes, you'll pay $2000 for a coffee table. But it's solid cherry, made in the USA, with no metal fasteners whatsoever. Everything is sliding dovetails.
How is following instructions to assemble a prefabricated kit comparable to creating/building something yourself? With Ikea furniture, there's no creativity involved at all. Unlike other furniture systems, you don't even have the slightest choice in how you assemble them. This is like pretending that you created something because you successfully opened the package.
Using a smurf-scale hex wrench to coax an incorrect number of bolt-like objects into ultra-cheap particle board certainly didn't make me value the finished product more. Instead, it filled me with rage and curiousity about how long the indentation of the smurf-scale hex wrench would last in my thumb and the crook of my index finger (spoiler: 2 days)...
. . .the real Ikea Effect is the feeling of shame for donating your time and efforts to such a crappy outcome. Perhaps this manifests itself in the form of "pride", but as a defense mechanism.
Caterham (and other brands) are popular in the UK
http://www.caterham.co.uk/
Not sure why I didn't see this mentioned...
IMO, it's simply an understanding level. Explains Windows and iPod/iPad too.
When you put something together yourself, you'll gain an understanding of said thing. If you understand it, you'll appreciate it more in comparison to a black box.
Lots of people have used Windows enough to have a better understanding of its quirks and how stuff works in the Windows world than they do the unknown of Linux (or Macs, for that matter).
Understanding something rather than just having something takes up a bigger chunk of the brain, so it seems natural that one would have a stronger connection to those things. Doesn't mean you have to build it to gain understanding, but that's one way that'd help.
Seems again the xkcd joke http://xkcd.com/198/
Captain Obvious discovers that if he plants his head up his rectum, he can extract the turd lodged in it and use it for an article.
Jesus on a pogostick, are you kidding me? Of course people value what they build for themselves. It's called emotional attachment!
Thats true.
The IKEA effect doesn't apply only to Open Source. I worked for a company that had a strictly internal program - in that sense it was not open source and wasn't intended to be open - and the owner, who was the first programmer, couldn't stand the idea of replacing any code. He never got angry with us for suggesting it, but it was literally too painful for him to consider deleting any part of his creation. So as the business grew and he had to spend more and more time in management and less and less in programming, he ended up having to hire five programmers to do what two should have done easily with well-managed software.
You see the same emotional investment when a fork of a project is announced by someone who is not satisfied with some aspect of maintenance, development or support of an open source project. Much of the criticism of the fork by the original project developers is almost always emotional; it is painful to see someone take away their brain child.
So be ruthless to your own code. Throw it out when a better way presents itself or the new specs don't need it. Don't hesitate; it's not like shooting your own sick dog who looks up at you through his pain with those sad eyes while you take aim. It really won't hurt as much as that. It's just code. Remember, it's not even the program; you don't get that until you translate from programming language to machine code. So be ruthless with your own code. Respect everyone else's as if you were dealing with their favorite and only child. There's a good chance they haven't learned that lesson yet.
I did not build Linux, still I enjoy using it. One could argue that this is because it is build by my peers, however I also love my Mac Book Air and my little green Yoda puppet. Neither of these are build by my peers.
Seriously. The icon changes when you push the mouse button to start a drag on any ejectable volume.
Sure, it requires you to have faith that there might be someplace useful to drag it to. Or to be observant when you accicentally hold a click on an ejectable volume.
I suppose you're too much of a purist to ever try dragging a volume. But if you had tried right-clicking on the volume, well, there you have another way.
What you're really complaining about is the lack of that tiny, tiny, "Why should I do anything with that?" triangle about the some place in the MSWindows task bar where the trash icon in the stock dock on the Mac would be, the one you can click on to see and manipulate the status (I guess?) of certain attachable devices. Talk about having to have someone point that one out to me.
But, then, right clicking worked well enough for me.
(And many of my co-workers just pull the USB Flash drive and don't worry about it. Buy a new flash unit when it dies. It's gonna die anyway, as they perceive.)
So, what's your complaint again?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The majority of Open Source users are NOT developers. At most, the average user is somewhat more likely to "get under the hood" than the average Winblows user. Not to say that there aren't a great many people who have more of a "personal ownership" sense of their Open Source systems than the average Winblows user, I'd guess that the odds that an Open Source user built her own box are far greater than for Windows users, but I don't think the "Ikea effect" is sufficiently important to be considered "the explanation" for why people use Open Source.
I use it because it's stable, reliable, and easily configurable, and it's maintenance requirements are lesser than keeping up with AV and malware protection in a Windows environment.
Just attempting to analyse my own creative urges, I think one of the reasons I like building things and/or using open source products is a sense that with commercial products I am beholden to someone who can, at any time, withdraw it or change it, disable it, or put up its price. If I build something myself I know that I can keep it just the way I like it, for ever.
I'm a Swede, almost half of my furniture is from IKEA, almost half of it is bought second hand (some of them originally from IKEA, but assembled by previous owner).
Whenever I move, I usually donate a lot of furniture to second hand shops (almost all second hand shops are owned by charity organisations here in Sweden) and then buy new ones where-ever I end up moving (usually from second hand and IKEA ;-). Do I prefer to keep IKEA furniture above other furniture, no. An IKEA bookshelf or cabinet takes about 5 minutes to assemble, some more complicated furniture may take up to half an hour, and it don't take much effort either, I don't feel any pride over the fact that I manage to assemble an IKEA furniture. What I keep is furniture with high functionality and good style that is hard to get, I do check if IKEA have stopped producing a furniture I like before I donate it, but usually the IKEA furniture is still in production and can be rebought at the new location, and I usually can find the same furniture second hand for a fraction of the original price at the new location (some of the IKEA series have been sold since the 1970's in Sweden, e.g. the Billy book shelf has been in production since 1978 and is the most popular product made by IKEA in Sweden, there are considerably more Billy book shelves in Sweden then there are people).
I do tend to keep furniture longer that I have really made, or modified, myself, or that have sentimental value (inherited furniture, gifts from someone I value, or ...eh... with some more memorable moments linked to them). But at most half an hour spent assembling them don't produce a sentimental value to me (unless they where assembled together with someone and I want to remember that moment). The number of furnitures I take with me when moving around have grown slowly during the decades.
It might be that I grew up with lego, building new things every minute and then "destroying" it, or it might be that I'm actually capable of making furniture if needed (but why, they are cheaper to buy), but it feels silly that people (I guess US-Americans, they are silly in general) place sentimental value in so small achievements from their part.
Oh, and I have contributed some small bug fixes to open source projects, but honestly, I can't even recall which ones (but sometimes I see one of them in use or mentioned somewhere and is reminded), I only bother to help very small projects that seem to need all help they can get, larger projects usually have large corporations backing them, I don't think any of "my" projects are still alive (the faith of almost all small open source projects). I'm not an involved open source contributor, I don't stick with a project, I like to read new code just because it is fun (like reading a new good book) and sometimes it is easy enough to make an improvement.
The article offered me a yes/no answerable question and I gave my opinion :-)