There where three sessions on MCPC devoted entirely to configurators. Before moving on to discuss them, let’s answer a question: “what is a configurator?”. The definition provided by Configurators Database is a good answer:

“Simply put, a configurator is a software application for designing products exactly matching customers’ individual needs.”

B2C online product configurators are of my particular interests. These ones are the tools of communication between producers and customers (or users) by allowing the later ones to customize products of the former ones. The whole process takes place over the internet.

De-facto standards in the design of configurators

Clarissa Streichsbier’s talk on “Identification of De-Facto Standards for Designing the User Interfaces for Web Based B2C Product Configurators” was one of the most appealing ones. Streichsbier (who works with cyLEDGE) looked at similarities of layout in 126 different online product configurators from 3 different industries: electronics, apparel and automotive. The Configurator Database was her source of links to the online customization tools. Sean Hanna and me have used this database as well in order to access most of the configurators discussed in our review.

The findings of Streichsbier’s review are very consistent. Standarts can be found in designs of configurators from the same industry. For example: electronic industry seems to pay little attention to the actual picture of the product. Instead it devotes most of the screen space for the customization menu. Automobile industry’s approach is the opposite. Product visualization in this case occupies majority of the screen space. It additionally seems that there are no clear standards across the industries. This means that if an experimental research was about to be conducted on online product configurators, these de-facto standards would definitely have to be taken into consideration in the design of the experiment.

“Open Toolkit”

In a later session Günter Dressel’s and Wolfgang Frühwirt’s, also from cyLEDGE, launched the project called “Open Toolkit”. Their aim is to create an open-source tool for development of configurators. I’m looking forward to seeing how this will develop and hope to contribute as well.