Original subtitles

- Hi, I'm William Lidwell and this is

Universal Principles of Design.

In this movie, the IKEA Effect:

Why Sometimes You Need to Break an Egg.

As early as the 1920s, American food manufacturers

were hard at work trying to reduce the time and effort

required to make a good cake.

But it was not until the late '40s that the right

combination of simplicity, flavor, and shelf life

was achieved in instant cake mixes.

All ingredients were included,

all you needed to do was just add water.

Early sales were promising

but the stalled in the mid 1950s and nobody really

understood why.

General Mills commissioned the psychologist, Ernest Dichter

to study the problem.

You've probably not heard of Dichter before

but you may have heard the term focus group,

well, Dichter coined that term.

Anyway, some analysis, Dichter concluded that the problem

was that the cake mixes were too easy,

too instant, that is, they were so simple that people

did not feel like they were baking a cake at all.

There was emotional investment or rewards in the process,

no sense of ownership.

They might as well have been buying pre-made cakes

at the store.

Dichter's solution?

In addition to adding water,

require bakers to break a couple of eggs to make the cake.

This, he reasoned, would make people feel more

connected with the creative process,

it would make them feel more like chefs.

And in short, it worked.

Sales shot up.

Now, there's some controversy around this

because Dichter followed up with another recommendation

that was even more effective at making people feel

more like chefs.

He recommended General Mills really play up

the icing of the cake, its decoration,

in the baking process and marketing.

This too, increased sales.

And not only did it dramatically increase the creativity

of cake making, paving the way for cake decoration

as a true art form, the heavily sugared icing helped

overwhelm some of the chemical tasting

preservatives in the mixes.

Whether it was requiring the breaking of an egg

or playing up the decoration angle,

we today know why these strategies worked.

It even has a name, the IKEA Effect.

So what is the IKEA Effect?

In short the act of creating a thing increases the perceived

value of that thing to the creator.

And it turns out that partially creating a thing,

meaning finishing something that's basically 80% complete,

like an instant cake or furniture from IKEA,

also makes it more valuable to the creator.

More valuable meaning people are willing to pay

more for products they create than equivalent

preassembled products.

And people value things they personally create

as much as if an expert had created them.

In general, the level of contribution in creating something

corresponds to its level of valuation.

High contribution translates into high valuation.

And low contribution translates into low valuation.

But if the effort required is too great

or the contribution is too small,

then people don't finish and the IKEA Effect

only holds when tasks are completed.

That's the trick.

That's why finding the sweet spot, the egg, so to speak,

between the actual level of effort and the preceived

level of contribution is key.

Ideally, you want a low level of effort

but a high level of perceived contribution.

That combo is the Holy Grail of the IKEA Effect.

So whether you apply the IKEA Effect to make your

designs more appealing, to engage people

in the design, marketing, and testing of your products,

or to increase the sense of product ownership

and brand loyalty of your users, remember,

to make a product successful, sometimes you need to

get people to break an egg.