Would your child enjoy the “IKEA effect?”

Pink Bow

Bow pic

Reg bow

We all know IKEA as the Swedish store which sells furniture that requires some assembling, but what’s the “IKEA effect?”According to Wikipedia, “The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created.” In other words, people who make things prefer their own creations to the same things created by others. Some researchers even claim that people will prefer their own imperfect creation to the same perfect ones created by so called experts.I tested this idea on my daughter, and it works!You can see in the photo a pink bow I made with her using the Tinkercad program. She specifically asked for the bumps, so I threw those in as well. That was a few months ago.Today, I asked her if she still prefers this pink bow, or a store bought bow, fitted with a metal headband. She still prefers the 3D printed pink bow she helped design herself, even though it lacks a headband to hold it on her head.If you think about it, it's not a real surprise. Why own something impersonal when you can have something personal?But at the same time, this speaks volumes about the future of mass customization, better known as 3D printing! Let’s design some more toys with the kids! The “IKEA effect” predicts they will love it more than something store bought!