Learning from IKEA Hacking: “Iʼm Not One to Decoupage a Tabletop and Call It a Day.”

Comments

Nic

Tenen

Summary

Learning from IKEA Hacking:

“Iʼm Not One to Decoupage a Tabletop and Call It a Day” is about a culture of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) supporters, specifically focused on "IKEA Hacking", where people take existing IKEA products and furniture and modify them to fit their needs. The process is all about creativity and expression: a way for the user to change the product to be more personal for them instead of a mass-manufactured piece of furniture that half the nation already owns. Many liken the process to code hacking: you change a piece of code or exploit its weaknesses to achieve some goal that you may have. The IKEA hacker takes the weaknesses in these products and forms their own product that is theirs alone.

The article was specifically about how online websites and services strengthen the activities of the DIY community and more specifically, IKEA hackers. These people receive recognition online for their work, and feel better about themselves and their creativity. Many of the creations are personal directly to the creator; for example, one man says his creations inspire and remind him of his children. The online DIY videos on websites such as Instructables.com continue to strengthen the community and allow access points for those new to the practice. The researchers concluded that the internet will get more closely integrated with the material world as things go by, and the online activities of the IKEA hackers supports this claim.

Discussion

I thought this was an interesting idea: take something that has been mass-manufactured and represents the loss of individuality and exploit it's weaknesses (and easily-constructed parts) and form something new that is not only functional for you but also an expression of your creativity. I thought it was cool when they made the analogy to "an anarchic event"; that in some way hacking this IKEA furniture made the hacker feel like they were "sticking it to the man" or something. It was definitely interesting, and I'll give props to anyone that would take a normal chair and turn it into a chair at a gynecologist's office (below, the GYNEA chair).