After finishing of the taught part of the Msc AAC I have now begun part-time work on PhD research.

During the research I will be dealing with questions on how to facilitate user’s interaction with online configurators for mass customization (MC) of products through computation. First problem which I have encountered is what is referred to as “mass confusion”, “burden of choice” or “paradox of choice”. Frank Piller mentioned it in his recent post about Coca-Cola Freestyle. Also the talk by Barry Schwartz available on Fluid Forms blog is very informative about the topic.

Now I’m occupied with an initial review of literature related to MC in the light of the mass confusion during the use of online configurators. It seems that MC is a topic discussed very broadly, yet the discussion is not backed up by much of empirical quantitative experimentation. I’m particularly looking for literature on quantitative experimentation with online configurators. If you are aware of some – let me know.

To sum it up: I have just embarked on a couple-of-years-long trip. It will certainly become an important part of this blog.