IKEA Besta Norum Manual: Audience Analysis & Redesign
This paper presents a dual audience analysis and recommendation memo focused on the IKEA Besta Norum assembly instruction manual. It examines the needs of two distinct audiences: the end consumer assembling the product and the User Experience Research Manager receiving the memo. The paper identifies four major weaknesses in the current manual — unclear product identification, inadequately defined hazard alerts, ambiguous information symbols, and poorly rendered illustrations — and provides targeted redesign recommendations for each. Drawing on technical communication principles, the paper argues that while IKEA's pictorial-only approach is commendable for its multicultural accessibility, the visual clarity of individual illustrations must be significantly improved to protect the consumer experience and the IKEA brand.
- End User and Consumer Audience Analysis: Diverse global consumer base and pictorial manual rationale
- Memo Reader Audience Analysis: UX Research Manager's role and informational needs
- Purpose and Overview of the Recommendation Memo: Memo scope and stated problems with Besta Norum manual
- Identified Problems in the Besta Norum Manual: Four specific clarity and illustration deficiencies identified
- Recommendations for Manual Redesign: Targeted fixes for each identified manual weakness
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- The paper maintains a clear dual-audience framework throughout, distinguishing between the end consumer's needs and the internal memo reader's priorities before moving into analysis — a strong structural choice that grounds every subsequent recommendation.
- Specific page and PDF-page references anchor every criticism to a concrete location in the source document, giving the recommendations credibility and making them immediately actionable.
- The recommendations section mirrors the problems section in sequence, so the reader can trace each issue directly to its proposed fix — an effective parallel structure in professional technical writing.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates audience-centered technical writing, a core skill in professional communication. By analyzing the needs, backgrounds, and expectations of two separate audiences before presenting findings, the writer shows how the same information must be framed differently for different readers. The memo format is then designed for the internal stakeholder (the UX Research Manager), while the analysis itself reflects an understanding of the diverse global end user. This dual-audience approach is characteristic of graduate-level technical communication coursework.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with two audience analysis sections — one for the product's end users and one for the internal memo recipient — establishing context and stakeholder needs. It then transitions into the recommendation memo itself, beginning with a purpose statement before cataloguing four specific manual deficiencies with page references. The final section offers targeted redesign recommendations that correspond one-to-one with the identified problems, closing the analytical loop cleanly.
End User and Consumer Audience Analysis
With over 300 stores in nearly 40 countries, IKEA has firmly established itself as an international brand. The target users of IKEA products speak dozens of different languages, which is one of the main reasons why IKEA produces text-free instruction manuals for the do-it-yourself assembly of their products. The audience of nearly any IKEA product is diverse in terms of age, income and social class, ethnicity, education level, lifestyle, and gender. IKEA furniture can be used in a home, office, or commercial setting. From college students to property owners furnishing income-generating rental apartments, an incredibly diverse consumer group will use IKEA products like the Besta Norum.
Each IKEA product has a name in addition to a catalog and SKU number. This helps users distinguish between products and purchase additional materials, accessories, and add-ons suitable for that product line. IKEA product names typically refer to places in the company's native Sweden and throughout Scandinavia.
The target audience may include professional contractors, but the hallmark of IKEA furniture is its ability to be assembled at home by consumers with no prior knowledge of carpentry, construction, or furniture assembly. Assembling an IKEA product is something one person can usually do alone, and which all but the youngest children can accomplish as well.
When reading a set of assembly instructions for an IKEA product like the Besta Norum, the target audience requires clarity and simplicity. Technical terms are to be avoided altogether. In most cases, audience members will have few tools and no familiarity with furniture assembly jargon. For this reason, and to reflect the linguistic diversity of its target audience, IKEA instruction manuals are almost always solely pictorial. There are many advantages to relying on pictures in IKEA manuals; however, an over-reliance on pictures also ignores a potentially large group of end users who do not have strong visualization skills or whose cognitive preferences are more verbal in nature. In other words, some users would prefer that IKEA instructions include verbal as well as pictorial cues.
Memo Reader Audience Analysis
The User Experience Research Manager works collaboratively with design and marketing departments to ensure that consumers are satisfied with IKEA products. This role is responsible for promoting positive consumer experiences by helping shape design and marketing decisions in accordance with user needs. As the reader of this memo, the User Experience Research Manager will be interested to know how the instruction manuals impact consumer impressions — not just of the Besta Norum product, but of the IKEA company and brand as a whole.
The User Experience Research Manager will be familiar with the company's overall mission and does not require extensive background information. However, some explanation of the target consumer group may help this reader understand what the end user requires from an effective instruction manual. The User Experience Research Manager already knows that an IKEA instruction manual targets a culturally, linguistically, and age-diverse consumer group and that pictorial representations are part of the company's policy in manual design.
What the User Experience Research Manager needs to know is how instruction manuals like the one for the Besta Norum can be improved. Specific topics this reader will want addressed include the length and layout of the document, the quality and clarity of the images, and how accurately the drawings reflect the actual product. It must be made clear that the instructions are sufficiently poor as to impact the consumer experience and potentially damage the IKEA brand. Finally, the User Experience Research Manager should ideally attempt to assemble the product using the current instructions in order to gain a fuller understanding of the problems and how they might be resolved.
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.