Recently, I bought a bookcase for my new apartment, and had to put it together from scratch. One of those exercises that always ends in frustration and confusion, right? Actually, although the physical aspect of putting it together was still there full-force, I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of the instructions – in fact, I was so pleased that I consciously overlooked the typo “easyer”, an act of defiance that ordinarily would have my inner grammar Nazi kicking down the doors of the perpetrator. I felt I would write up a short bit about what I thought was good about it.
The first thing that I noticed about the bookcase was the way the pieces are labeled. Instead of generically referring to the pieces as “Part A”, “Part B”, “Part C”, etc., in either an arbitrary order or the rough order in which they are assembled, and always using the same name to refer to the same type of piece, the piece names were chosen so that they directly referenced the order in which you used them. The entire sequence to construct the bookcase is seven steps, and as such, the piece names began with a number from 1 to 7, based on which step to use them in. They were then given a letter indicating when in the step they should be used; so the first piece in step 1 is 1A, the second in step 1 is 1B, etc. What struck me about this is that it was sometimes at odds with the function of the piece – the left side panel is named 1A, and the right side panel is 3B, despite the fact that they are mirror images of each other. In a “conventional” naming scheme, you know they probably would have been A and B, giving you no inherent clue when you actually use them. Similarly, the three back panels are 2A, 4A and 4B. I have to admit that this confused me slightly at first, but once I understood the naming sequence I found it very helpful.
The other thing that this bookcase did really well was handle the small parts – screws and bolts and such. Most of the fasteners were bolts for an Allen wrench, and there were a lot of them. However, instead of dumping all the fasteners into one giant pile and having you keep track of them yourself, the bookcase came with five “hardware packs” which each contained the fasteners for a single step. This means that when you get to step 1, you don’t have to concern yourself with finding a home for twelve extra fasteners you don’t need until later; they’re kept safely in the remaining hardware packs for when you get to the next steps. There was a bit of a mismatch in that there were only five packs, numbered 1 through 5, and the numbers did not align with the step numbers you actually needed them for. At the same time though, I can see an argument that if you did align the hardware pack numbers with the step numbers, there would be some confusion about jumping from hardware pack 1 to hardware pack 3, and that people would wonder what happened to hardware pack 2. So that’s probably OK.
The exercise also makes me wonder what more could be done to improve the experience of putting together furniture. Sadly, it’s unlikely that instructions will ever be completely unnecessary, which means trying to decipher broken English, technical jargon and poorly detailed graphics is probably an inevitable component of the process. But can the actual design of the furniture pieces help people understand how to put their furniture together? How about color-coded joints similar to what Dell used to do with computers – the plug is colored the same as the hole it’s supposed to go into? How about numbers or symbols on each piece to show what the next step is? How about a miniature deconstructable model of the final product? How about using undoable fasteners instead of screws and nails whenever possible, so if you start to put it together wrong you’re not left with a worthless misshapen heap of wood?
In closing, I can understand why most instructions don’t follow the conventions that this bookcase uses. It’s easier for furniture builders to make furniture this way. It’s easier to slap the same name and label on the same part every time. It’s easier to pack and ship a set of fasteners into one bag instead of into five. It’s easier to keep track of inventory when your part names follow a regular pattern. But what is best for your business internally may not be best for your consumers – the people who actually have to put it together. And they’re the people who ultimately pay your bills. If you make them happy, they will like you, and want to buy more of your products, especially when they’re as high-quality as this bookcase. (They will also write blog posts gushing about how awesome you are.) So kudos, World Market, for making your customers happy.