Breeding Objects Experiment 01 is my first experiment with configurators for mass customization of products over the Internet, conducted as part of PhD research at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies. The experiment is a comparison of two types of configurators: “parametric” configurators and genetic algorithms configurators. In parametric configurators users have to specify the values of each of the parameters explicitly, while in genetic algorithms configurators they are not required to do so. Thanks to artificial selection, they can instead navigate through solution space by breeding objects, that is manually selecting parents of next generations.

The experiment is only about the patterns of interaction with the tools available, so you will not be asked to fill in any questionnaires. Once you start interaction with the tools, you will be able to navigate between them using links on top of each page.