The IKEA effect and my new car
Once upon a time, when you bought a car, all you needed to know was where the gear shift was, the parking brake, maybe the clutch, and how to start and stop the vehicle. Simple.
Maybe the radio had a more sophisticated tuner, but the on/off knob was right where you’d expect. No fancy lights on the dashboard. No electronic screens. No voices directing us where to turn. No seat warmers. No blind spot monitors or lane changing jiggles.
Start, Drive, apply brakes, stop, Park. Life was good. And maybe an 8-track tape player.
Several months ago we purchased a 2025 automobile with which we have been generally satisfied. The price was as expected, the salesperson was polite and engaging, and we felt at peace with the overall dealership and the service department. But now for the challenging part.
For our 2025 purchase, the “owner's manual” was four books—one of which has 300 pages and twenty QR codes that take us to a downloadable website.
We watched some of the short videos on care tips, features, and functions. I watched a YouTube video on how to set up the navigation system. Sixteen other videos were narrated by a smiling professional model.
Okay, I get it, life is complicated but stay with me on this one.
Most of us are familiar with the maps function on a browser. Simply plug in your current location and then type where you want to go. And like magic a map appears and a voice tells us to start the route, to turn right, to turn left. This is a very comforting feature because at 70 miles an hour in six lanes of speeding traffic, it is not a healthy distraction to be looking at a map. Okay so far?
On a recent road trip, I could not get the voice to engage. Nor could I find help in any of the four manuals.
Viewing multiple videos on the company website did not resolve the problem. But I was taking this frustration very personally. I would not cave in, and I would not go away quietly kicking and screaming into the existential digital night.
Out of total desperation and humility I went to a big box tech store and I was reassured by a service technician, who was clearly just out of middle school, that my “functionalities" were right on target and there must be a defective chip.
Then the answer was disclosed much like finding the mythical Rosetta Stone that unlocked the key to the hieroglyphics. I needed a “lightning cable” to link my iPhone. How could I have been so stupid? Does not everybody know that? Well, I did not know that, and I bet there are millions of others who do not know that either. If you are one of those, please stand up and raise your hand.
Following this obscure piece of information, all of the technology worked like magic. I now know that feeling of accomplishment, perhaps not a big deal to many nontechies, but there is a sense of “I did it.”
So what does this have to do with IKEA?
Have you ever bought an IKEA bookcase? That “some assembly required” warning on the box is serious.
You probably spent a few hours on the floor with parts and pieces, screws, washers, and Allen wrenches strewn about. But you got the bookcase together and felt a sense of satisfaction (or your spouse threatened divorce, take your pick).
There’s a term for that feeling: the IKEA effect. Researchers found that if you have to put something together yourself, you have a bigger stake in how you feel about that piece of furniture. You created it, you have a bigger sense of ownership. You get the same sense of accomplishment and value when you cook something from scratch, build the Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle out of LEGOs, or knit a sweater.
And finally assembling the tech in my new car gave me an IKEA effect I can savor. Now you know.
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