The North Face In-Store Explorer is live!
by Darren DavidTuesday, December 19th, 2006
It has been well over a year since my last post about working with WPF and all of that heads-down no-posting has resulted in a real live app. After much hard work over the last year Fluid launched The North Face In-Store Explorer kiosk nationwide into The North Face retail stores nationwide. This is the first retail application deployment on Vista, and we’re all very happy with the results. Just in time for the holidays!
As the lead engineer on the project, I was responsible for the architecture of the system and the lion’s share of the UI development. We leveraged WPF for the kiosk UI, which was an absolute pleasure to work in (once Microsoft stabilized the APIs, of course). I think we probably touched all corners of the framework: 3D, media integration, rich styling and databinding, as well as a heavy dose of .NET 2.0 datasets on the back end. And that’s just the UI — we also built a robust system for remotely updating the kiosks. This is easily the most complex system I’ve ever been involved in developing. It consists of a central web-based CMS and remote monitoring application, and a concert of WCF and .NET 2.0 applications on the kiosk that safely and securely update content and applications, report home if something goes awry, and recover automatically if and when it does.
We also became experts in Windows Vista deployment, which gave us a chance to really get under the hood of this new OS. I’m very impressed with the Windows AIK (Automated Install Kit) that allowed us to create a DVD-based installer for Windows Vista that included all of our custom tweaks, patches, configuration and applications. In the end, the installers across the country who did the work were spared from several hours of noodling in Vista, instead, all they had to do was drop in the DVD, enter the product key, and come back in 20 minutes to put some final polish on the installation. Very clean.
I’m impressed with the performance and stability of the app/platform as well. We spent a lot of time in Q/A before we launched, though with new drops of Vista coming almost weekly it was difficult to establish a good baseline for testing the application. It’s one thing to have to reinstall new drivers, it’s another thing entirely to have to completely reinstall your OS from the ground up weekly in your Q/A environment. And given our production schedule, which necessitated launching while the RTM build of Vista was still cooling from the oven, we had a heck of a time juggling beta drivers from third-party vendors. That said, we have yet to see a single problem in production related to Windows Vista, which I think is a testament to the effort that really went in to its development — and in my book that’s pretty amazing for a 1.0 release. Then again, we’re definitely not using anywhere near all of the end-user-facing functionality that Vista provides, so we’re probably not pushing it as hard as a power user would.
If you’re in the U.S and want to check out the final app, go find a store near you and check it out!
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:38 am
[...] The North Face In-Store Explorer It was at PDC 2005 when The North Face showed a prototype of a WPF kiosk they were building. Well, with Vista and WPF having RTM’d, the real kiosk has been deployed, which you can read about from lead engineer Darren David at Fluid’s blog. (Fluid is the agency that did the work for The North Face.) If you live near a North Face retail store, go check it out! This is an exciting milestone for WPF and Vista, as it is one of the most ambitious .NET 3.0/Vista applications deployed to date. Note that the white paper written about this application is still relevant and worth reading. The code samples all work just fine on the final bits and have some useful code as far as state management, image montages and a 3D carousel. Filed under: Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon), WPF, Avalon [...]
January 2nd, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Ping back from samiqbits.blogspot.com
Ok, so Vista hasn’t gone live to the main stream public yet and the first retail application has shipped to the public (hands)…
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:38 pm
[...] Karsten gives an update on the North Face In Store Explorer WCF application that floored many of us at PDC05 and has now been deployed. He also reminds, “Note that the white paper written about this application is still relevant and worth reading. The code samples all work just fine on the final bits and have some useful code as far as state management, image montages and a 3D carousel.” [...]
February 28th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
[...] I myself have been spending a great deal of my free time getting to know the engine. It’s quite fun and I’m always awed by the fact that, this is Flash. My latest experiment involves streaming video. It was inspired by the great work done on The North Face Kiosk by close friends and colleagues, Darren and Tommy. During the development of The North Face Kiosk I never thought what they were doing with WPF would have ever been possible, with acceptable performance, with Flash anytime in the near future. I was wrong, take a look… [...]