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How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

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Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#331

Post by voxelghost »

moogly wrote: post #176
javcasas wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have the Mitsubishi Pajero. Feel free to find the derogatory term in the wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero

Similar trivia with a Swedish connection: the original name of the Honda Fit/Jazz was Honda Fitta, but then they found out it's the Swedish word for "cunt" so that was a no-go.

They even had the slogan all drawn up;

Fitta: Small on the outside, Big on the inside!

They should just have gone with it , staring everyone, who brought it up, down.

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#332

Post by voxelghost »

arctusnova wrote: post #298
kalind wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Swede and I knew a guy named Jerker growing up. I always wondered if his parents gave him that name to mess with him. In Swedish "j" is pronounced as the English "y", so I think they could have at least spelled it as Yerker.

That's my name. When I asked my parents about it, they just said they liked it and didn't really think about any possible negative sides. Introducing yourself to English speakers can be interesting... often times people won't catch the name when pronounced the Swedish way, so you end up quickly clarifying it by using the English pronunciation. Sometimes a hand gesture is needed.

Hello my name is Jer ... Jerry!

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#334

Post by jzwinck »

RankingMember wrote: post #322
throwa356262 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the opposite end of the spectrum we have Sony Mobile, where product names are probably assigned by their worst enemy. You can fully expect them to release a high end phone called Xperia one II 10 as successor to last year's Xperia one III And also a low-end phone called Xperia II 10 Ultra Making it impossible for buyers to know which phone to buy this year.

Reminded me of something not as bad as that, but: another Japanese company (Shimano) also has confusing (to my American brain) product progression. Currently, their road groupsets rank like this (low to high): Claris (8-speed) Sora (9-speed) Tiagra (10-speed) 105 (12-speed, available in both mechanical and electronic) Ultegra (12-speed, electronic) Dura-Ace (12-speed, electronic) More niche, but Ltwoo (Chinese bicycl…

Right, and if you want to buy a mechanical front derailleur for your road bike one of the most loved models for decades has been the Ultegra FD: https://fish.shimano.com/en-US/product/reels/spinning/frontd...

And here is Shimano Tiagra which costs much more: https://fish.shimano.com/en-US/product/reels/conventional/le...

They also have a line of bicycle components called Nexave for city riding. Here's one Shimano Nexave product: https://fish.shimano.com/en-US/product/reels/spinning/frontd...

Oh and here is Shimano Clarus: https://fish.shimano.com/en-US/product/rods/muti-species/cla...

Shimano also make mountain bike components. SLX are a nice midrange set, for example: https://fish.shimano.com/en-US/product/rods/bass/slx_casting...

They even sell cycling specific sunglasses called Technium: https://fish.shimano.com/en-US/product/rods/salmon_steelhead...

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#335

Post by designerarvid »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #329
designerarvid wrote: post #274

Clear and interesting names is extremely good customer experience. Most companies name their products straight from the ERP system, creating incomprehensible codes that sounds like they come from Star Trek. Ikea has pioneered so much within service design (design beyond the actual product). The in-store journey, the self-assembly, the assembly instructions, clear naming, clear product display, in-store restaurant exp…

“Journey” is an interesting way to frame purposefully creating an incomprehensible maze to force end users to walk through the entire warehouse. One of the worse “clever” design philosophies I’ve seen, it’s actively user hostile

If everything considered 'user hostile' on this forum actually was, the world economy would look very different. People love going to IKEA.

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#336

Post by designerarvid »

euroderf wrote: post #301
designerarvid wrote: post #274

Clear and interesting names is extremely good customer experience. Most companies name their products straight from the ERP system, creating incomprehensible codes that sounds like they come from Star Trek. Ikea has pioneered so much within service design (design beyond the actual product). The in-store journey, the self-assembly, the assembly instructions, clear naming, clear product display, in-store restaurant exp…

The wordless instructions are generally great, except in the occasional instance where there's a confusing panel or two. Has anyone ever seen an academic analysis of the visual "language" used ? Or even any articles about it, serious or humorous ?

My guess is just that they are quite serious about user testing the manuals. 3-4 iterations and you're good to go. Many companies would never imagine that you could test manuals.

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#337

Post by thomashabets2 »

ragazzina wrote: post #297
thomashabets2 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite what I said. In this case you would understand me if I pronounced "ABBA" the Swedish way, so the IKEA scenario doesn't happen. Not that I do say it that way when speaking English, just like I don't say my own name in the Swedish way. But if "ABBA" had been named "ÄBBA"[1] (to be clear, that's not "A with an accent", that's a completely different letter) then I would pronounce it "ÄBBA". And it would be anno…

I mean the errors and awkward grammar / pronunciation in songs by ABBA.

Comes with the territory, no?

"If I was a rich man", "I feel good", "we don't need no education", the repetition of "and their bombs" in Zombie, "Me and Bobby McGee", the weird "this" pronunciation in "Sweet Dreams", making people mishear it as "these", etc… (just off the top of my head)

The (deliberate) almost nonsense in Nirvana songs, too.

It is funny (heh) that the "funny" in ABBA's "Money, Money, Money" and "Does Your Mother Know" is a misuse of the word that my mum makes all the time when speaking English.

Other than that, non-native English speakers having an accent is not really something to have an opinion about. I think most Swedes probably don't hear it, and think that the Skarsgårds don't have a Swedish accent, whereas I can almost always spot a Swedish accent immediately.

What would you say would set ABBA apart, here?

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#338

Post by zamadatix »

jltsiren wrote: post #315
greatgib wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 2 things that are unrelated. When you can't say or pronounce a word, in most language it is hard to remember it. Also, there is the question of degree of similarity or sound of reading unknown foreign words. If you don't speak ch ok Chinese, a lot of words with different meaning will kind of read or sound the same and it will be very hard to recall and differentiate them.

My point was that you can usually pronounce foreign words in your native language, if the alphabet is the same and your language has a straightforward mapping between spelling and pronunciation. And then you can derive the spelling from that fake pronunciation. For example, my native language is Finnish, and that approach works for most words in Germanic, Romance, and Baltic languages. Polish and Czech words are hard…

It goes beyond spelling - English doesn't even have all the phonemes to represent ÄLSKVÄRD if you wanted to (particularly the last half) so you just have to guess how that should sound anyways, especially since unfamiliaretters exist at the same time. If course you can do the approximation, it's not too hard to try, but you can do the same thing with spelling or any other attribute and end up with the same kind of problem - it just isn't the kind of word you'd deal with day to day.

I wouldn't mind if English had some standardized spelling though :D.

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#339

Post by asjo »

martin- wrote: post #262
asjo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Danish and Norwegian share the order; the order is ÆØÅ in Danish as well :-)

But they are on different keys on keyboards, annoyingly, leading to one "ÖÆØ" key and one "ÄØÆ" key on Scandinavian keyboards (not to mention the horrible "½§§§½|" key!).

Yeah, "nordic" keyboards are a pain. I always get a Danish, or extra keycaps :-)
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