One of the hardest things to tell someone you live with is to clean up after their dirty selves. Either you ask your roommates to clean up their mess and suffer the consequences, or say nothing and live in a pile of filth until they get there on their own.
Many of the brave souls that choose to go the former route don't always opt for face-to-face confrontation. Come on, you've got to soften the blow somehow. Instead, some people may choose to leave little passive- aggressive messages on Post-It Notes around the house to get the job done.
Well now all-powerful IKEA has come up with a high-tech way to tell your roommates to clean up their stuff. The furniture mega-chain just released a new app this month that allows you to use little emoji-like symbols to let your roommates know when their mess has gone too far.
The IKEA Emoticons app, which is available to download for free for iOS and Android devices, adds a little keyboard to your smartphone that includes pictures that you can communicate with in text messages and the like. There's everything from IKEA furniture to animals to the chain's famous Swedish meatballs. The app is basically just an extension for your smartphone with IKEA-brand emoji.
"With IKEA Emoticons you can express yourself more freely at home. Say what you want to say and bring a smile to your loved [sic] ones faces," according to the app's description. "It's simply impossible to feel offended if you tell [sic] some one to clean up if you say it with IKEA Emoticons."
IKEA has a pretty good, albeit odd, sense of humor, so I'm pretty sure this is just another instance where the furniture giant is having a bit of fun with us. The company has been known to show its funny bone every once in a while, like with its Apple parody last year or taking over movie theaters with their furniture in an elaborate promotion. I can't imagine this app being anything more than a fun gag for smartphone owners and a way to keep the company in the news, of course.
Now if only there were emoticons that allowed us to vent our frustration over the impossibility of constructing IKEA furniture, we would be all set.
[H/T The Next Web]
