The IKEA Effect for AI Products: Leave Knobs and Levers
Don't automate everything away — give users enough control to feel ownership.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 82%
Even when AI can fully automate a task, doing so can backfire because people want to feel they contributed. Khan applies the IKEA effect to AI: deliberately leave 'knobs and levers' so users retain a sense of control and ownership, which makes them value the product more. The aim of great AI is to lower the barrier to creation, not to remove the human entirely.
Origin
Khan applies the classic Betty Crocker cake-mix anecdote and the psychological 'IKEA effect' (people over-value what they help create) to AI product design.
Core principles
- 01Full automation can reduce, not increase, product value
- 02People feel more empowered when they have an impact on the end experience
- 03Great AI lowers the barrier to creation rather than automating the problem away
- 04Leave deliberate points of user control in an otherwise automated flow
How to run it
- 1
Check whether full automation is actually the goal
Before automating a task end-to-end, ask what problem you're really solving. If the user's satisfaction comes partly from participating, removing all their involvement will hurt adoption even if the automation works.
Pro tip Ask what the product is really for — e.g. Blue Apron isn't solving 'get people fed' (that's DoorDash); it's solving 'help people feel closer to cooking.'
- 2
Leave knobs and levers
Intentionally preserve some controls the user can adjust so they feel ownership over the outcome, the way a self-driving car still lets you control the AC and music.
Pro tip The controls don't have to affect the core automation — they just need to give a sense of agency.
- 3
Position AI as a barrier-lowerer, not a replacer
Frame the product so AI makes the experience easier to use and brings the barrier to creation down, rather than trying to take the whole task away from the person.
Watch out Trying to automate everything away is exactly the pattern that made products underperform versus ones that kept the user involved.
In the wild
Betty Crocker launched a cake mix where you only had to add water — one ingredient — and sales tanked. They changed the instructions so customers had to add eggs, and sales skyrocketed, because customers wanted a little control over the experience.
→ A small reintroduction of user effort reversed a sales decline, demonstrating the IKEA effect in a real product.
Blue Apron makes people feel they're getting closer to cooking, whereas if the real problem were just being fed you'd build something like DoorDash — press a button and food arrives. The value is in the feeling of making something.
→ Clarifies that the right AI design depends on whether the user wants participation or pure automation.
Common mistakes
Automating the whole job away
Removing all user involvement (the one-ingredient cake mix) strips the sense of contribution and can tank adoption and sales even when the automation technically works.
Solving the wrong problem
Building full automation when the user actually values the experience of participating means you've mis-identified the problem — like building DoorDash for someone who wanted to feel they were cooking.
Is it for you?
Best for
PMs designing AI features where user satisfaction depends partly on a sense of participation or craft
Not ideal for
Pure-utility tasks where users genuinely just want the outcome with zero involvement
From the transcript
“you want to kind of leave some knobs and levers for your customer to feel like they're still in control of the experience”
“that's kind of like the Ikea effect applied to AI like people feel more empowered when they can when they actually have an impact on…”
“all they had to do is you know basically change the instruction so that all you have to do is add eggs and that one…”
“AI makes your product easier to use and it brings the barrier to Creation down”
From the episode
Becoming an AI PM
Aman Khan (Arize AI, ex-Spotify, Apple, Cruise)