I am going to be conducting a competitor analysis, as I want to learn as much as possible about assembly instructions and what is currently being done out there. I will be looking at all types of assembly instructions. This includes paper, digital PDF, websites, and other interactive tools and applications. I will be using a checklist to help me compare them.
| Instruction | Was it easy to access? | Are they easy to understand? | What form is the content? | Are steps presented in the right order? | What does the user do if they get stuck? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IKEA Digital Manuals | |||||
The most popular and well known furniture store is IKEA. It has stores globally and everyone at some point has bought something from IKEA and assembled it. I wanted to have a look at what a leading manufacturer does with it’s instructions to learn from them and see what they are doing effectively and where they could improve on.
IKEA allow users to search for assembly instructions online and follow along from there. They predominantly use diagrams and illustrations for the products, with little to no written language throughout it. I think that these instructions do have their purpose and use, as they try to dumb down the assembly to just images. I still think though that there needs to be some sort of written language to guide the user as you have to look at the images multiple times to figure out what direction things go, which one goes on top of where.
