Want People to Care More? Make Them Work for It.
If you want someone to value something, don't just give it to them. Make them build it. The IKEA Effect, coined by Michael Norton, Dan Ariely, and Daniel Mochon, describes how people place a higher value on things they help create (Norton, Mochon, and Ariely 2012).
In controlled experiments, participants who assembled IKEA furniture, folded origami, or built LEGO models consistently rated their own creations higher and were willing to pay more than those who received the same items pre-made. Effort turns labor into love. The more we invest, the more we believe it's worth.
Betty Crocker learned this the hard way. Their cake mix was too easy. Just add water. Sales lagged. When they revised the instructions to include adding a fresh egg, sales improved. That simple change gave people a sense of contribution. Adding an egg made it feel more like baking, not just preparing a product (Shapiro 2004).
This phenomenon isn’t confined to home goods or baking. Apple engineered friction into the act of opening an iPhone box. The result is theatre. Tom Vanderbilt described it as a “carefully orchestrated ritual” (Vanderbilt 2023). You’re not tearing open a flimsy container. You’re being welcomed inside.
Even wine gets better when there’s a little struggle. In a 2017 Oxford study by Charles Spence and Qian Wang, research participants drank the same Malbec from two bottles. One had a cork, the other a screw cap. The wine from the corked bottle was rated 10 percent higher in quality and 4 percent more intense in flavor (Wang and Spence 2018).
The same dynamic plays out with digital experiences, as well. Ryan Buell and Michael Norton found that customers valued services more when they could see the work being done behind the scenes (Buell and Norton 2011). A simple list of searched flights beat a loading bar. Domino’s live pizza tracker makes you feel like something worthwhile is happening on your behalf (along with lessening uncertainty; similar to how the Uber map lessens uncertainty).
When diners can see their food being cooked, they rate it more highly. But this only works when the final result holds up. If the product is bad, transparency about effort backfires (Buell, Kim, and Tsay 2017).
So add friction. Make effort visible. But only if the outcome is worth it. Because what people want isn’t ease. It’s evidence that someone cared.
Buell, Ryan W., and Michael I. Norton. “The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value.” Management Science, vol. 57, no. 9, 2011, pp. 1564–1579. INFORMS, https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.1110.1376.
Buell, Ryan W., Tami Kim, and Chia-Jung Tsay. “Creating Reciprocal Value Through Operational Transparency.” Management Science, vol. 63, no. 6, 2017, pp. 1673–1695. INFORMS, https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2411.
Norton, Michael I., Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely. “The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love.” Journal of Consumer Psychology, vol. 22, no. 3, 2012, pp. 453–460. Wiley Online Library, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2011.08.002.
Shapiro, Laura. Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America. Viking, 2004.
Spence, Charles, and Qian Janice Wang. “Assessing the Impact of Closure Type on Wine Ratings and Mood.” Beverages, vol. 3, no. 4, 2017, article 52. MDPI, https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5710/3/4/52.
Vanderbilt, Tom. “Unboxing the Delightful UX of Apple's Boxes.” Fast Company, 20 July 2023, https://www.fastcompany.com/90916642/unboxing-the-delightful-ux-of-apples-boxes.