Configurator

Configurators, also known as choice boards, design systems, toolkits, or co-design platforms, are responsible for guiding the user through the configuration process. Different variations are represented, visualized, assessed and priced which starts a learning-by-doing process for the user. While the term “configurator” or “configuration system” is quoted rather often in literature, it is used for the most part in a technical sense, addressing a software tool. The success of such an interaction system is, however, not only defined by its technological capabilities, but also by its integration in the whole sale environment, its ability to allow for learning by doing, to provide experience and process satisfaction, and its integration into the brand concept. ()
Advantages.
Configurators can be found in various forms and different industries (). They are employed in B2B (business to business), as well as B2C (business to consumer) markets and are operated either by trained staff or customers themselves. Whereas B2B configurators are primarily used to support sales and lift production efficiency, B2C configurators are often employed as design tools that allow customers to "co-design" their own products. This is reflected in different advantages according to usage:
For B2B:
For B2C:
Enabler of mass customization.
Configurators enable mass customization, which depends on a deep and efficient integration of customers into value creation. Salvador et al. identified three fundamental capabilities determining the ability of a company to mass-customize its offering, i.e. solution space development, robust process design and choice navigation (). Configurators serve as an important tool for choice navigation. Configurators have been widely used in e-Commerce. Examples can be found in different industries like accessories, apparel, automobile, food, industrial goods etc. The main challenge of choice navigation lies in the ability to support customers in identifying their own solutions while minimizing complexity and the burden of choice, i.e. improving the experience of customer needs, elicitation and interaction in a configuration process. Many efforts have been put along this direction to enhance the efficiency of configurator design, such as adaptive configurators(;). The prediction is integrated into the configurator to improve the quality and speed of configuration process. Configurators may also be used to limit or eliminate mass customization if intended to do so. This is accomplished through limiting of allowable options in data models.
Existing configuration paradigms.
According to (), configurators can be classified as rule based, model based and case based, depending on the reasoning techniques used.