Make something for yourself, the IKEA way
After moving house, comes the inevitable trip to IKEA.
My wife mentioned something that she noticed from the many different types of shoppers that IKEA welcomes each day.
That not everyone is a DIY guru. However it’s very empowering that a person can pick up a IKEA instruction booklet, and by following a few steps they can get a good feeling about making their own furniture.
It allows you to be more adventurous, and creates a feeling like they have achieved something that they may not have thought they could do before.
This was also the example for a client who created the MTV2 network branding, back in the late 90’s. When an employee learnt how easy Ikea instructions were to follow – he chose to label a web interface the same way, so the visitor’s attention could be drawn to focus on specific areas of the message one part at a time.
This is the technique that some user experience designers use for web interfaces. For example, managing profiles like your Facebook, Flickr, or MySpace account, and even sending emails to friends.
Thankfully, as more web companies realise the need for user centered design – by fulfilling the needs and requirements of users when online, web sites have become more task or function orientated, and less flash splash pages – so 1990’s!
As a company our sole focus is to merge the requirements of users needs and business goals to seamlessly ‘make things work’. What is actually making the web site work is not important to users, thats just magic.. but the main goal is to empower users is creating something for themselves – This is something Ikea and the popular social networking sites do today.
