Ikea Bed Frame Instructions
Constraints:
Ikea has stores in many countries. In addition, they are a company that is trying to make a profit by selling ready-to-assemble furniture. Most customers buy furniture at Ikea because it is cheaper than pre-assembled furniture. Thus, Ikea’s prices have to be relatively low in order to maximize profits. Thus, creating one set of instructions instead of multiple sets of instructions for different countries would be cheaper to produce.
Ikea also has the image of having well-designed products that have a simple and clean look to them. Therefore, the instructions should also mimic this brand image, which it does by not including writing and using simple images instead.
Usability Principles:
Learnability: With written instructions, it would be a lot faster and easier to figure out how to build the bed. It can be difficult at first to just see the images and to figure out what they mean. For instance, in Figure 8., I did not immediately understand what the instructions meant. It took me a while to understand that the instructions meant that one could adjust the level of one’s mattress, depending on where one put the support beams.
However, the images are relatively informative with good design. They use universal symbols such as arrows and numbers. They also zoom into parts that are smaller. In addition, the serial numbers are printed next to each piece, so one can figure out the right pieces to use. However, these design details aren’t very noticeable, especially since the instructions are in black and white, so a new user might not notice these at first.
Memorability: Ikea instructions follow the same format, so regular users would probably be able to more easily build the next piece of furniture they buy from Ikea. For instance, they would realize each piece has a serial code next to it.
Efficiency: Ikea instructions tend to look and be pretty similar, so a frequent buyer of Ikea furniture would probably easily understand the instructions unless there was an instruction not similar to any they had seen before.
Accessibility: Some people who are less visual people may have more trouble understanding the instructions, making the instructions less universal then they at first appear.
Tradeoffs:
Ikea traded the clarity of written instructions for more universal communication through drawings and symbols. The lack of words ensures that the same set of instructions can be used by people from many countries without having to create separate instructions in different languages.
Design Changes:
I personally would make different versions for different languages. I think the images were well-designed, in that anyone would be able to figure them out, but I also think that it does take a while to figure out exactly what to do just by looking at the images.
Like I said above under learnability, it was difficult to understand what some of the images meant at times. I had to take a lot of time to first comprehend the image before I could start building the bed frame. This made it more of a hassle to build the bed, which makes me want to buy prebuilt furniture instead. If it were easier to use the instructions, customers would have more incentive to purchase more items from Ikea.