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If assembling a piece of furniture makes people attached to it, imagine how attached they would be to a piece of furniture they perceive that they have had a part in actually designing?

1) Have a set of standard template furniture items

2) Allow user to view the item through a WebGL viewer (or however its done these days).

3) Allow the user to adjust certain aspects of that piece of furniture within the viewer. IE desk surface height, depth, space between legs etc.

4) Use parametric algorithms to adjust the componentry accordingly within existing load bearing parameters. For example, "desktop needs attachment screws every 200mm". This kind of formula is already commonplace in many CAD packages [1].

5) Have the backend software export the parts as CNC cut files and create a bill of materials.

6) Package the cut parts and additional components (screws etc) and ship direct to client.

7)(optional depending on level of unscrupulousness) Have the parametric algorithms incorporate a fatigue based breaking point so they can justify throwing the crumbling desk away in five years and you can sell them more furniture "they" designed that is more in line with current trends.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GClGn1Y7bNA#t=3m58s

EDIT: formatting

Ikea has done that for quite a while now and is ramping it up this year. The PAX wardrobe system [1] has been an IKEA staple for many years and people are very happy with it (what I hear around me). They starting to take this concept into the living room with the BESTA storage system [2] which allows people to create their own entertainment unit or cupboard. Not to mention their kitchen systems because kitchens are always a "design your own" purchase.

[1] http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/bed... [2] http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/liv...

They even have an 3D planner for BESTÅ, but in Flash http://www.ikea.com/us/en/rooms_ideas/planner_bestauppleva/i...
Wow, I'm surprised how functional the 3D planner is. Totally didn't realize they had taken things to this level.
But there is a risk of reverse Ikea effect. That happened to me.

I bought a bed from Ikea, but it came incomplete. And it never was exactly as I wanted it. So I threw away most of the parts and made my own bed around few of the side boards. It didn't take one evening but a week of evenings.

Empowered by that experience I made legs for my desk. Shelf from scratch. Painted one old shelf that would have otherwise gone to garbage. Assembled sliding boxes to go under that bed. Sanded my girlfriends old table. Etc.

We have like one very cheap piece of furniture from IKEA and made lot's ourselves. So it's very bad business model to sell stuff that's not quite right, but has obviously usable parts. If you allow people to design their own shit, you run another risk. Especially with current prices of power tools.

They call this Industry 4.0
I thought you were making a sarcastic joke in reference to "Web 2.0" till I saw this: http://www.zdnet.com/article/industry-4-0-its-all-about-info...
I never understood this before reading this post, that the Real secret behind IKEA is the same as Betty Crocker. For those of you from outside of the States or those inside and too young, or have never baked a cake; Betty Crocker was a company that started after WWII and invented (or at least perfected) a mixture of dry ingredients that could be mixed with water, thrown into an oven and get a very nice quality cake.

The original product just required water but failed in the market, because American housewives believed that just adding water and sticking something in the oven was not 'cooking'. It was a shortcut that made them look bad. So Betty Crocker came up with the idea of providing a dry mix that required the cook to add an egg to the dry mix. That was the secret, by adding one ingredient people could save face and believe that they were 'cooking'.

IKEA is leveraging the same principle -- inserting and tightening a few screws and bolts here and there and you feel like you've 'built' something.

Very powerful stuff....

What I like the most about Ikea furniture is that it is of high quality, high enough to survive moving multiple times, while being so cheap.

I tried other self assembled furniture before - the quality was just not there. I did not love them, and threw them away as soon as they became too obviously crooked.

Using the Ikea brand in the title is incorrect if the specific effect described should extend to Walmart furniture, but doesn't.

One of the tricks to Ikea furniture is to use wood glue in all the dowel pins. With this trick it survives multiple moves for me.

Other people have the same stuff and after 1 move it's loose/wobbly without glue.

Applying glue to a pure dowel pin joint isn't a trick; it's how you complete the joint. Some IKEA pieces in fact come with little plastic pockets of glue for this purpose. You should be able to get that free from the store.

The trick is that with IKEA ware, even joints that in theory shouldn't need glue benefit from it. In some pieces, there is some fastener holding parts together, often that silly cam screw which locks onto the head of a pin. Then there are secondary dowel pins that, in theory, reduce a degree of freedom and prevent parts from rotating.

Problem is, those cam lock things are poorly designed. So in fact the joint benefits from glue.

That is not a trick; that's how you complete dowel pin joints in woodworking. If the only thing holding a joint together is dowels, you must glue.

Here is the thing. In some IKEA units, the dowel pins only prevent the rotation of a part, which is held by a metal fastener (e.g. those shit cam screw and lock things). Glue isn't going to do much there, in theory!

In practice, those fasteners are poorly designed garbage, so the glue will help there.

Well, it depends. I have an Ikea shelf that is roughly 7' x 7'. If I'd glued the dowels, it probably would be sturdier, but it would also still be stuck in my living room from two apartments back. Without glue, it holds together well enough, and still comes apart when I need it to.
As much as Ikea served me well for a period of my life (with some pieces continuing to do so), I wonder what has prevented designers of different styles from copying Ikea's model, which clearly works and scales. I know it isn't that easy, but I feel like there's a gap in the market between say...Ikea, and what I typically consider "mid to high end" Crate & Barrel/West Elm/Pottery Barn/Ethan Allen.

Ikea gets a lot of things right, but if you don't like their aesthetic, you're pretty much out of luck finding something of similar quality for that price point.

>I wonder what has prevented designers of different styles from copying Ikea's model, which clearly works and scales.

"Works and scales" may have everything to do with Ikea's shady tax structure[1], not its flat-pack furniture.

[1]https://www.fastcodesign.com/3035734/infographic-of-the-day/...

Would you say the same thing about Apple's phones?
Ikea's aesthetic is not just some designer's idea of what nice-looking furniture is, it's actually designed to be flat packed. The raw materials that go into the product ARE cheaper for Ikea (particle board vs. hard woods), but not by leaps and bounds (unless you get in to the more exotic hardwoods). Flat pack is also cheaper to warehouse and distribute, and your custmers can come and collect it and build it themselves. Mid to high end furniture often has more intricate joints and curves, and is probably cut by machine, but assembled by hand in a factory.

TL;DR: You'd have trouble producing furniture in other, more traditional styles that could also be flat packed and assembled at home by the average consumer at a reasonable price point.

Mid market is a tough place to be in any business. During recessions you get eaten by cut rate competition, and during good times your brand strikes people as being too downmarket.

Besides, there has to be an easier way to make money than competing with companies like Ikea, which has spent decades wringing out costs from one end of the supply chain to the other.

I'd like the opposite - IKEA aesthetic at higher quality. I love how it looks, but I'd pay more for it not to be cheap crap.
Meh. This is just such a small part of it. Where else can you get a decent piece of furniture immediately (3h round trip), be able to transport the thing single-handedly, easily fit it through doors, elevators, stair cases, car hatches and have a good idea what you are getting. I would argue it's ease of sourcing that makes people happy just as much. It goes with the provider instinct.
I hate Ikea and everything it represents.

When I make something and look at it I notice every little flaw. When I look at something from IKEA I notice its made of painted compressed particle board and held together with pegs and plastic cam screws.

Maybe people should care about the quality of what they make and how it looks.

Looking at the web services today, they feel just as cheaply cobbled together parts from node.js or whatever.

Cheap beats quality in soo many cases.

Why should I care? Its strong enough to hold together, and I get to spend my money on something that matters more to me (such as travel)
I agreed.

Funny, it's almost as though not everyone is the same.

I like the theory: labor leads to love.

Would be interesting to see it applied to relationships.

This also explains Gentoo users. And, to a lesser extent, *BSD users. The more work you put into compiling, installing and configuring a system, the more attached to it you become.
This is a similar phenomenon to the not-invented-here myth.
I've had an IKEA Jerker (lol) for almost 15 years and it's an absolute tank.

Some of their stuff is just junk, though.