I was listening to a podcast recently about IKEA hacks from 99% Invisible. They briefly mentioned that one of the reasons IKEA furniture is so popular and you drag it around for so long is because you feel a sense of accomplishment and ownership once you put it together. This dovetails somewhat with a couple of articles I've read that postulate that people who are in field in which they actually produce some product or create tangible things are more satisfied others.

Does this mean that we should deliberately design products with some assembly required? I know I've held on to some junky stuff longer than reasonable because I assembled it from trash myself. But I'm not sure screwing together my dining room table and chairs really made me feel any more attached to them. Actually it made me notice the low quality of the materials involved more than anything else. But the simple plug and play of some electronics does leave me feeling a little dissatisfied as well. So I'm not sure how I feel about this premise. It would be interesting survey material to see what others think.

Take survey here