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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?"
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.
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.
Maybe more people would appreciate furniture built from good materials if those manufacturing furniture didn't think a rectangular TV stand made from wood and with proportions a first-year design student knows by heart was somehow worth $500+ just because it wasn't ugly as hell (I've become increasingly convinced that furniture manufacturers deliberately make their cheaper pieces of furniture ugly in various ways to ensure sales of their more expensive furniture remain high).
Of course, even IKEA seems to be doing this. Their cheaper furniture often looks like they took a decent design and "tweaked" it to have weird proportions and added some random design elements that would ugly it up a bit...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
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.
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 )
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?
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).
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.
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.
IKEA furniture uses almost no chipboard. This is one of the reasons why I have some of it: the parts that look like real wood are, well, real wood. It is birch and fir for the most part - not maple, walnut, and mahogany - but real wood nonetheless. Aside from metal components, the only non-wood portions are some panels of thin MDF, for instance forming the back wall of a dresser. People might give IKEA shit for producing what seems to be cheap crap, but it is of much higher quality in materials, durability, and design than the majority of "some assembly required" furniture pushed by big box stores.
I am gonna wave a really big bull shit flag here. Have you ever taken any of IKEA's furniture/shelves apart to adjust them to fit in a different size location? I recently bought a wooden (so i thought) table from there to use as a work surface. I needed to cut the table down by a foot or so as it was to wide. Once it was cut... the table top was 2 1/2" thick with an 1/8" worth of veneer on the top and bottom with CARDBOARD honeycomb through the center of the entire table. Only the 2-3" of edges had "actual" wood in it. This has not been an isolated incident with my experiences with IKEA furniture. Sure lots of their furniture is real wood, unless you get something that is painted white or other full solid color. Those painted items are completely made of MDF except for the feet, they were actually made of wood. So don't get them wet! Learn from my mistakes. This is just my experience and your mileage may vary...
I have plenty of IKEA furniture. It's perfect for my lifestyle - I take 3-6 month contracts and follow them around the country. When I move more than a couple of states away, I have found it's cheaper for me to completely furnish my house from Ikea than it is to rent a truck and move all my stuff. (Not to mention also easier and more fun).
But, for the most part, it isn't "real wood" - most of the parts are laminate with folded cardboard on the inside.
I don't buy it for its high quality, though - it's cheap, basically disposable, and not really meant to last. And, at the end of a contract, it's easy to post to Craigslist and can be disassembled to fit into most cars so people can come haul it off for me.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.