=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1705/05-paper
|storemode=property
|title=Beyond De-Facto Standards for Designing Human-Computer Interactions in Configurators
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1705/05-paper.pdf
|volume=Vol-1705
|authors=Tony Leclercq,Jean-Marc Davril,Maxime Cordy,Patrick Heymans
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/eics/LeclercqDCH16
}}
==Beyond De-Facto Standards for Designing Human-Computer Interactions in Configurators==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1705/05-paper.pdf
Beyond De-Facto Standards for
Designing Human-Computer
Interactions in Configurators
Abstract
Tony Leclercq A web configurator is an application that allows its users to
University of Namur
tailor a customizable product to their own needs by speci-
Belgium
fying their requirements through a graphical user interface.
tony.leclercq@unamur.be
Configurators have been successfully applied to tangible
Jean-Marc Davril products (e.g., cars, mobile phones) as well as intangible
University of Namur products like software (e.g., operating systems, ERPs) and
Belgium services (e.g., insurance). A configurator user faces multi-
jean-marc.davril@unamur.be ple decisions until she has addressed all the characteristics
to be retained in the final product. In order to enable users
Maxime Cordy to make the right decisions, with as low effort as possible,
Skalup HCIs in configurators must be thoughtfully designed. Re-
Belgium
searchers have previously identified guidelines for HCI de-
maxime.cordy@skalup.com
sign by conducting empirical studies of existing configura-
Patrick Heymans tors. In this vision paper we propose to draw HCI guidelines
University of Namur through a different approach, which consists in framing the-
Belgium ories from the HCI community into the context of configura-
patrick.heymans@unamur.be tion models.
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation: User Inter-
faces]: graphical user interfaces (GUI), standardization.
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). Introduction
EICS’16, June 21-24, 2016, Bruxelles, Belgium. In many sectors, companies rely more and more on mass-
customization strategies with the aim of providing their
customers with products that meet their individual needs.
When growing their distribution at large scales, these com-
40
panies have to create product lines of highly variant solu- that fit their cognitive expectations.
tions. This shift from mass production of identical products
to mass customization of variant products has brought to In this vision paper, we focus on the need for guidelines to
light important technological challenges related to sales help practitioners evaluate the quality of HCIs in configu-
processes as it has become essential to help customers rators. In Section 2, we show that previous works related
determine their own products. To this end, companies often to this issue primarily consist in empirical studies of exist-
rely on web configurators, which provide automated support ing systems. In Section 3, we discuss a new approach for
for customizing products. Configurators offer a controlled assessing the quality of HCIs in configurators, which is em-
environment that allow their users to gradually specify the bedded in theories from the field of HCI. Finally we propose
characteristics to be retained in the final product. three research questions we plan to address in future work
to realize our vision.
Configurators and recommender systems (RS) can be seen
as similar technologies as they both aim at helping their State of the Art
users navigate large solution spaces. While the solution Rogoll et al. [9] offer a comparison of twelve configurators
space of a RS is made of a set of items, the solution space from the apparel industry in terms of usability and product
of a configurator is defined by the set of all possible product visualization. The authors aim at illustrating good and bad
variants that can be derived through the configuration pro- practices in the design of configurators.
cess. From the customerâĂŹs perspective, navigating the
solution space of an RS consists in browsing through the Abbasi et al. [1] have conducted an empirical study of 111
different items, whereas within a configurator it consists in web configurators coming from 21 different industrial sec-
selecting the characteristics that will eventually define the fi- tors reported in the Cyledge database1 . The authors report
nal product. For both types of systems, it is crucial for HCIs quantitative empirical results related to good and bad prac-
to be carefully designed so that the solution search is both tices in the design of HCIs, focusing on aspects that may
effective and efficient. directly affect the end-user experience by causing confu-
sion, waste of time and errors.
Configurators often have to cope with many product charac-
teristics and components, as well as business rules and In [7] Rabiser et al. identify eight evaluation criteria, which
technical constraints. This complexity can create a de- they refer to as user-guidance capabilities, through a litera-
crease in customer value as users become exposed to an ture review on product derivation support in configurators.
overwhelming set of configuration choices to resolve. Com- The authors discuss the eight capabilities within the HCI
plex co-design processes can make vendors undesirable for framework of cognitive dimensions of notations [2]. They
customers [4]. It can also cause users to miss the product then review how the DOPLER CW, a configuration tool,
that best suits their needs as they shift towards simplifying supports these capabilities by analyzing the results of user
decision heuristics [3]. For these reasons, HCIs must be interviews.
carefully designed and should provide users with clear ex-
In [8] Randall et al. analyze five principles to be taken into
planations about the configuration task by using a language
1
http://www.configurator-database.com/database
41
account when designing user interfaces for configurators in they are specifying all the different ways a user can navi-
order to improve usability: (1) customize the customization gate the solution space.
process, (2) provide starting points, (3) support incremental
refinement, (4) exploit prototypes to avoid surprises and (5) On the other hand, HCIs allow users to communicate their
teach the customer. configuration choices to the system, and are thus the mean
by which users navigate the solution space. HCIs can be
Research Challenges seen as the interface through which users can relate to the
Beyond De-Facto Standards configuration model. This idea leads us to question whether
The existing work presented in Section 2 primarily relies on recommending practitioners with concrete HCI designs
empirical studies of existing configurators to identify good based on particular patterns found in configuration models
and bad practices in HCI design. In [6] Nielsen and Lor- can be a viable approach.
anger define de-facto standards as web elements that are
The idea of inferring design guidelines from the properties
similarly designed on 80-100% of all websites. Streichsbier
of configuration models will require to understand how the
et al. [10] have already put the usefulness of de-facto stan-
available domain-specific knowledge should be taken into
dards for configurators into questions, as they observed a
consideration in design decisions.
lack of consistency in the use of web elements in configu-
rators. Even though their study focuses on particular types In order to investigate these ideas, instead of performing
of web elements and took place in 2009, when configura- crossdomain studies of existing configurators, we propose
tors might not have been characterized as a widespread to frame relevant HCI theories in the context of both config-
technology, it still raises the question of whether alternative uration modeling and domain-driven design. To this end, we
approaches could bring valuable support to the design of plan to address the following research questions through
HCIs. We argue that methodologies other than inquiries for future work:
de-facto standards remain under-explored.
Towards Model-Based Evaluation RQ1 How should domain specific knowledge drive the
According to Junker [5], a configuration task can be defined evaluation of configurator HCIs?
by (1) the functional and technical properties of the product
and the relationships between them, and (2) the user re- RQ2 Which theories from the field of HCI should be con-
quirements regarding the functional properties. These con- sidered for inquiring HCI design recommendations
stituents form the configuration model, which specifies the based on the properties of configuration models?
set of all possible final products. More specifically, it defines RQ3 What are the types of tools that could assist practi-
the set of all possible sequences of configuration choices tioners in assessing the enforcement of the elicited
a user can make before she reaches a valid final product. recommendations?
In other words, when engineers work on the acquisition of
domain knowledge and write down the configuration model,
42
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