Vans’ Configurator – A New Perspective
by Andy LloydMonday, May 11th, 2009
The other night I let my son configure a pair of Vans slip-ons for his 6th birthday. Watching him and his 3 year old brother navigate the process was informative. Two key things I observed:
- My son moused-over every single option for every single product part (not kdding…he methodically moused over every option). This was only possible because Fluid Configure uses client-side technology (Adobe Flex in this case) to do the image previewing, meaning you don’t need a round trip to the server to generate the image. Using server-side imaging technology this could take an hour or more.
- My 3 year old son asked, “Can we turn it over?” Specifically, even as an observer to the process he wanted to view the product from multiple perspectives. While Vans doesn’t feature the incredible rotation of Your Reebok, but it does show the product from multiple views with great responsiveness.
Overall it was gratifying to see them quickly grasp the experience, move through the configuration process and take great pleasure from the emails and SMS’s they were able to send letting their family know about the shoes they had just designed. If only the design of their shoes could have been so positive.
