IKEA Hacking

Paper: Learning from IKEA Hacking: "I'm Not One to Decoupage a Tabletop and Call It a Day."

Written by: Deniela Rosner and Jonathan Bean

Comments: Jill

Summary:

This paper deals with multiple people taking IKEA furniture and turning it into their own creations. Each person enjoys the design process and really gets satisfaction from it. One user said that they really personalize everything because it was a reflection of themselves in their work. One person modified a chair, and another modified cabinets to go into their kitchen where they wanted them.

Many people hack items for their home use, and this touch based on how people go about doing it. There are now websites that explain how to hack certain IKEA items and a community for people who like to express themselves with this type of creativity. The community allows them to connect with other people who are like them so that they can share their creativity with people who will truly appreciate it.

Discussion:

I thought this was extremely interesting because I've put together IKEA furniture before and not once have I not followed the directions. It would be cool to see what kind of things that a person can make with certain IKEA furniture. I'm glad that they tried to differentiate between code/software hacking and the "hacking" of other items. I'm not sure these can really be compared, but at least they made the effort to differentiate them.