Bouba/kiki effect

Fifteen years ago I went to a museum exhibit on Reggio Emilia teaching methods that I still think about once a week or so. (Reggio Emilia is similar to Montessori in that it is child-led exploration but different in that encourages multiple cross-modal forms of expression to aid comprehension.) The Reggio Emilia exhibit featured children performing a cross-modal exercise of drawing the sounds of various types of shoes walking down stairs to illustrate the "Hundred Languages of Children" concept. It…

I first learned about this effect from Hempuli, the developer of the game "Baba Is You". It turns out that "Baba" and "Keke", two named objects that the player can control, were named after this effect! Hempuli talked about this during one of their twitch streams many months back. (I can't say enough wonderful things about this game)

First heard about this on QI. I stopped watching it after Stephen Fry stopped presenting it, and then watching old episodes didn't feel right anymore after Sean Lock's passing...

Relevant anecdote - the other day a friend sent me the logo for a new product his company is working on. Their target market is women in their 20s, and the product name starts with a B. But the logo is a jumble of sharp angles -- definitely a 'kiki' instead of a 'bouba'. So, although it would be impossible to measure, I wonder if the design is less successful because of this effect.