Interactive Visualisation of Products in Web Configurators
Open Postdoc position (1,5 years)
We are looking for a candidate holding a PhD in computer science. The candidate should have an expertise in Web development, ideally with a background in variability, product lines, and configurable systems.
Contacts: Mathieu Acher (mathieu.acher@irisa.fr), Benoit Baudry (benoit.baudry@inria.fr)
Keywords: Web configurators, Web development, domain-specific languages, variability management, software product lines
Description
Numerous companies develop interactive Web configurators to assist users in customising sales products through the selection of configuration options. A visual representation of these products is an important factor in terms of user experience. However, an analysis of 100+ existing Web configurators highlights that not all provide visual representations of configured products [1, 2]. One of the current challenges is the trade-off developers face between (1) either the memory consuming use of pre-generated images of all the combinations of options, or (2) rendering products on the fly, which is non trivial to implement efficiently, especially in a Web setting. We believe that a new approach to associate product configurations to visual representations is needed to compose and render them dynamically. The objective is to define the theoretical foundations and develop the tooling support for effectively building Web configurators with product visualization capabilities. The comprehensive solution, based on state-of-the-art Web and configuration techniques, will be integrated into the Web environment of FAMILIAR [3, 4]. An evaluation of the proposal will be performed in the context of industrial projects. The candidate will have the opportunity to lead the project, including direct interactions with industrial partners as well as the management of engineers and PhD students.References
- "The Anatomy of a Sales Configurator: An Empirical Study of 111 Cases" Abbasi, Hubaux, Acher, Boucher, Heymans in 25th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'13), 2013 PDF
- "Interactive Visualisation of Products in Online Configurators: A Case Study for Variability Modelling Technologies" Marianela Ciolfi Felice, Joao Bosco Ferreira Filho, Mathieu Acher, Arnaud Blouin, and Olivier Barais. (2013). In 17th International Software Product Lines (SPLC(2)), 2013 PDF
- "Separating Concerns in Feature Models: Retrospective and Multi-View Support" Arnaud Hubaux, Mathieu Acher, T. T. Tun, Patrick Heymans, Philippe Collet, and Philippe Lahire. Chapter Book In Domain Engineering: Product Lines, Conceptual Models, and Languages (editors: Reinhartz-Berger,I. and Sturm, A. and Clark, T. and Bettin, J. and Cohen, S.), 2013 PDF
- "FAMILIAR: A domain-specific language for large scale management of feature models" Mathieu Acher, Philippe Collet, Philippe Lahire, Robert B. France: Science of Computer Programing (SCP journal) 78(6): 657-681, 2013 PDF
Working Environment
The postdoc candidate will work at Inria in the DiverSE team. DiverSE’s research objective is to compose and synthesize software diversity from design to runtime. The team is actively involved in European, French and industrial projects and is composed of 8 faculty members, 16 PhD students, 6 post-docs and 4 engineers. The position is already open and applications will be reviewed until the position is filled in September 2014. The monthly net salary is 2100 euros and the contract is for 18 months.Position: FILLED