Bemz is a company that specialises in slip cover for a lot of IKEA sofas and chairs. I love them, since they recently added my type of IKEA sofa in their assortment. Just a while ago, I ordered some fabric samples and I must say … it won’t take that long before I place my order.

Next to the fabulous slip covers, they also have a very interesting blog. And it’s thanks to this  that I got to know these two sites that give you the opportunity to design your own rug. So check out Rug Designer or Rug Couture and start creating your own rug!

Ikea Germany launched a campaign in 2007 which put personalisation central. In several shopping malls, the cover of the catalogue was rebuilt. Shoppers were invited to take place in the real life cover and their picture was taken. Five days later, one could pick up their personalised custom example at the nearest Ikea store.

In my opinion it’s a nice example of how a company involved with mass production, finds opportunities in this era of mass customization!

Some months ago one of my colleagues pointed me to a talk by the American psychologist Barry Schwartz. In his presentation “The Paradox of Choice” he focusses on one of the central elements of our Western Society, the freedom of choice. Common belief starts from the idea that we need a lot of choice to feel free. Schwartz argues that too much freedom will eventually make us “more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied”.

I’d like to link the concept of “too much choice” to an element my colleague Katrien stumbled upon. She found research which indicated that in the process of mass customization the concept of  mass confusion is likely to pop up. Mass confusion can be seen as the burden of all the effort, complexity and risk a customization process provokes.

In an article titled “Overcoming Mass Confusion: Collaborative Customer Co-Design in Online Communities “ a way to overcome mass confusion is co-designing: collaboratively working on a design would make it easier to overcome the stress of mass confusion.

In customisation process finding the right balance between (collective) guidance & individual freedom should thus be one of the key questions.