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Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

ikea.greg.technology

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Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

#71

Post by montroser »

One time I hired two different random guys on craigslist to assemble three IKEA bureaus. They didn't know each other beforehand, and I hired them separately to work together.

They started by jockeying to see which one was going to be in charge, arguing about how to proceed, throwing shade, making claims of superiority. One guy wanted to follow the instructions, and the other guy just wanted to go on intuition. They couldn't agree and asked me which one should be in charge, and I said, I don't know just work together, follow the instructions, and get this stuff built.

The instructions guy assumed the lead, and then they settled into a rhythm. Three hours later, they couldn't stop gushing about each other, and a most beautiful bromance was born. They exchanged telephone numbers and made plans to hang out on the weekend.

Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

#72

Post by an0malous »

montroser wrote: post #71

One time I hired two different random guys on craigslist to assemble three IKEA bureaus. They didn't know each other beforehand, and I hired them separately to work together. They started by jockeying to see which one was going to be in charge, arguing about how to proceed, throwing shade, making claims of superiority. One guy wanted to follow the instructions, and the other guy just wanted to go on intuition. They c…

I feel like there’s a takeaway here for the male loneliness epidemic but I’m not sure what

Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

#73

Post by xxs »

mschuster91 wrote: post #65
xxs wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any drill nowadays would have a clutch. Use it, so it limits the torque. It applies for pretty much any kind of work (e.g. including mounting intake manifold on a lawn-mower, but then it's likely to use a torque wrench too)

> Any drill nowadays would have a clutch. Use it, so it limits the torque. The problem is, unless it's an actual torque wrench these clutches are allll over the place. There's a reason they give only some arbitrary scale, and often enough they're so unreliable that the same electric screwdriver / drill will produce different torques for the same setting depending on the battery SoC, the power setting and the cleanlin…

While not-precise settings 1-3 usually don't do much and after 4-5 screws you'd know which setting feels right (incl. tightening by hand to climb the scale). Most folks won't have sub 5Nm torque wrenches in general to calibrate or finish, so it'd be wrist tight feeling, I suppose.

>depending on the battery SoC,

The clutch is mechanical, so it should not matter and for brushless motors, the battery charge (voltage) should not matter at low torque, either. Just to be clear - I'd not advise to copy someone else's drill clutch settings.

Worst case if you end up stripping the chipboard - fill with putty of epoxy and wood shavings, wait for 5-6mins, re-drill, so on. It's annoying if it happens but overall it's quite easy to recover from.

Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

#74

Post by akerl_ »

gcanyon wrote: post #55

(in my experience) if this table included other flat-pack vendors the difference would be stark. Wayfair and the like are far more complex to assemble.

Agreed. Whenever we end up getting non-IKEA furniture I preemptively cringe as I open the instructions.

The only time I’ve had a mistake building IKEA furniture was after opening both pieces of a combo shelf at once: there was a subtle but relevant distinction between the crossbars that was not obvious from the instructions, because ordinarily you wouldn’t have pieces from another shelf to confuse with each other.

Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

#75

Post by antisthenes »

an0malous wrote: post #72
montroser wrote: post #71

One time I hired two different random guys on craigslist to assemble three IKEA bureaus. They didn't know each other beforehand, and I hired them separately to work together. They started by jockeying to see which one was going to be in charge, arguing about how to proceed, throwing shade, making claims of superiority. One guy wanted to follow the instructions, and the other guy just wanted to go on intuition. They c…

I feel like there’s a takeaway here for the male loneliness epidemic but I’m not sure what

The takeaway is the same that's been there for thousands of years - do stuff together, in real life.

Bonus points if the stuff you're doing is challenging.

Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

#76

Post by jstummbillig »

folkrav wrote: post #59
jstummbillig wrote: post #37

Cool! I had codex have a go at calculating "effective price" on a few items, that prices in the assembly labor, and then also calculates the delta between price and effective price. Obviously very depended on how you value your time, but here are some items at $30/hour: BRIMNES storage bed + headboard, Queen $549 + 320 min labor = $709 (delta: +$160 / +29%) HEMNES 8-drawer dresser $380 + 236 min labor = $498 (delta:…

If an ALEX drawer unit takes them over an hour and a half to build, IMHO they're doing something wrong. Many others on that list seem suspiciously high (the BRIMNES comes to mind). Curious how it came up with those values.

Codex inferred Assembly minutes = round(0.44 * steps + 0.70 * parts) from the data.

Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

#77

Post by RetroTechie »

lozenge wrote: post #61

A lot of these pdfs contain steps which are optional or only apply in certain situations. Does that decrease the complexity because there are less steps to do? Or does it increase.. the cyclomatic complexity!

> A lot of these pdfs contain steps which are optional or only apply in certain situations.

Participants in Ikea speed-assembly competitions would like to know more.

Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

#78

Post by bjelkeman-again »

bartread wrote: post #63
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pax with sliding doors took me a really long time to put together. Long enough that when my brother in law (who doesn’t like assembling stuff) asked if I recommend them, it was a solid No.

Yeah, we ordered a double width pax with sliding doors, drawers, shelves and lighting, plus another half wardrobe with a mirror door, shelves, and lighting. I’m fairly handy and quite enjoy putting things together so it never crossed my mind to use IKEA’s assembly service, but I did notice they were offering it for £300, which I took as a signal that it would take a while. In the end it took 12+ hours over the course…

That said. The wardrobe is still there and working great many years later.

Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

#79

Post by bartread »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #78
bartread wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we ordered a double width pax with sliding doors, drawers, shelves and lighting, plus another half wardrobe with a mirror door, shelves, and lighting. I’m fairly handy and quite enjoy putting things together so it never crossed my mind to use IKEA’s assembly service, but I did notice they were offering it for £300, which I took as a signal that it would take a while. In the end it took 12+ hours over the course…

That said. The wardrobe is still there and working great many years later.

Yeah, what convinced me was seeing friends’ setup that they’d had for 10 or 15 years still working flawlessly.

Re: Show HN: IKEA Complexity Index

#80

Post by Mawr »

gregsadetsky wrote: post #60
dagurp wrote: post #38

I once bought a paper basket that was made out of two pieces and I managed to assemble it the wrong way. I guess I should multiply those estimates by pi.

(OP) thanks for this insight, truly - I took another look and ikea.com reviews actually include a whole dedicated "ease of assembly" value! some very easy-looking products do actually rate quite badly on the assembly adding that column now, should be live in the next 10-20 mins cheers!

Creating accurate assembly instructions is surprisingly difficult.

To be able to create them, you have to know how to assemble the product, BUT that also means you've been blessed by the curse of knowledge — now you have to perfectly serialize your knowledge into instructions WITHOUT omitting any implicit "obvious" steps that you may have taken due to already being familiar with the product.

Very few assembly manuals get this right. In the case of furniture, the orientation of items is often omitted, after all isn't it obvious that this side goes up? This is how I ended up with some exposed non-laminated wooden board parts in my bed. Sigh :)

QA testing is the key here — write the first draft, have someone try to assemble the thing as naively and true to instructions as possible, fix mistakes, repeat.

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