Comparing or Configuring Products: Are We

Getting the Right Ones?

Product

Author

First Name Last Name Age Nat. Ph.D.? Posit. Affil. Spoken

Lang

Nicolas Sannier 32 French Yes Postdoc Inria French,

English,

Reunion

Isl. creole

Guillaume Bécan 23 French Not yet PhD student University of

Rennes 1

French,

English

Mathieu Acher 29 French Yes Associate

Prof.

University of

Rennes 1, Inria,

IRISA

French,

English

Sana Ben Nasr - Tunisian Not yet PhD student Inria Arabic,

French,

English

Benoit Baudry - French Yes Research

Scientist,

Head of

Triskell team

Inria French,

English

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 2

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 3

Comparator http://www.autonet.ca/comparenewvehicles#comparenewvehicles-tabs

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 4

Configurator http://www.toyota.ca/toyota/en/build-price/

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 5

Configurators

Allow to customize a product

Guidance capabilities

Configuration steps are hardwired

Not all features are presented

User effort can be significant

Pros and cons

Comparators

Intuitive and easy to understand

Immediate view of differences

between the compared products

Interaction effort is minimal

Force the user to choose a subset of

products to compare (usually 2 or 3)

Features are presented in a

predefined and fixed order

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 6

Comparators and configurators commonalities

Common goal: choosing a product

Both operate on product descriptions

Product

Comparison

Matrix

Different pros and cons

BUT

Product Comparison Matrices (PCMs) as inputs…

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 7

- for comparators

- for configurators 300+ PCMs in Wikipedia

thousands on the web

Long term vision Generating product comparators and configurators from PCMs

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 8

Comparator Configurator

PCM

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 9

1. Boolean yes/no answers

2. Partial/constrained yes/no answers

3. Single-value answers

4. Multiple values answers

5. “Unknown” answers

6. Empty cells

7. Inconsistent cells

8. Additional / Extra information

From Comparison Matrix to Variability Model (Sannier et al., ASE’13)

• 75-80% of the PCMs content is

manageable as usual by variability

constructs

• 20-25% remaining represent

uncertainty or numerical values

Calls for more research for modeling and reasoning about variability

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 10

Heterogeneous information, lack of formalization, ad-hoc

PCMs (Sannier et al., ASE’13)

The larger the PCM is, the less it is readable and

understandable : “more is less”

No automated support,

guidance capabilities

Issues and Challenges Product Comparison Matrices (PCMs)

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 11

Issues and Challenges Product Comparison Matrices (PCMs)

Long term vision Generating product comparators and configurators from PCMs

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 12

Comparator Configurator

PCM

Long term vision Generating product comparators and configurators from variability models

and PCMs

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 13

Contributors PCM editor with:

• Support for defining variability

• Consistency checking

• Export to CSV or Wikipedia format

End users User friendly comparators and configurators

No hidden configuration or feature

Better understanding of constraints

Better usability

Developers Synthesis of VMs from PCMs

Automated reasoning on VMs

Framework for building comparators and configurators

Variability

Model

Editor Comparator Configurator

PCM

Research questions

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 14

Variability

Model

Editor Comparator Configurator

PCM

RQ1: What is the syntax and semantics of PCMs?

- Variability patterns observed in Sannier et al., ASE’13 need to be refined and

formalized.

- What is the semantics of coma-separated values?

- What does mean an empty value when choosing a product?

Output: empirical study on real-world PCMs.

RQ1

Research questions

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 15

Variability

Model

Editor Comparator Configurator

PCM

RQ2: What are the issues faced by end-users when exploiting a PCM?

- Overwhelming amount of information (too much products or criteria)?

- Imprecise information?

- Unclear semantics?

Output: usability study

RQ1

RQ2

Research questions

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 16

Variability

Model

Editor Comparator Configurator

PCM

RQ3: How to specify and maintain a PCM?

- Considerable effort on spreadsheets (Panko et al., 2008, Abraham et al.,

2007, Cunha et al., 2011, Hermans et al., 2012).

- PCMs can be seen as a special form of spreadsheets but none of these works

considered the variability they contain.

Output: domain-specific editor for specifying PCMs

RQ1

RQ2

RQ3

Research questions

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 17

Variability

Model

Editor Comparator Configurator

PCM

RQ4: How to synthesize variability models from PCMs?

- Numerical values and uncertainty?

- Scalability?

- User’s input is needed to disambiguate PCMs

Output: supervised and tool-supported techniques

RQ1

RQ2

RQ3

RQ4

Research questions

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 18

Variability

Model

Editor Comparator Configurator

PCM

RQ5: How to generate configurators or comparators from variability models?

- How to reason on variability models for comparison and configuration?

- How to encourage developers to respect good practices (Abbasi et al., 2013,

Trentin et al., 2013) ?

Output: engineering techniques for generating comparators and configurators

RQ1

RQ2

RQ3

RQ4

RQ5

Research questions

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 19

Variability

Model

Editor Comparator Configurator

PCM

RQ1: formalization

O1: empirical study

RQ3: specification and

maintenance

O3: domain-specific editor

RQ4: synthesis

O4: supervised and tool-

supported techniques

RQ2: scalability limits

O2: usability study

RQ5: customized generation

O4: engineering and reasoning

techniques

Compare and Choose your Answerer!

VaMoS'2014 - Sannier, Bécan, Acher, Ben Nasr and Baudry – PCMs, VMs and Configurators - 20

Look at the Author Comparison Matrix and Choose

Ask your questions ;-)

Product

Author

First Name Last Name Age Nat. Ph.D.? Posit. Affil. Spoken

Lang

Nicolas Sannier 32 French Yes Postdoc Inria French,

English,

Reunion

Isl. creole

Guillaume Bécan 23 French Not yet PhD student University of

Rennes 1

French,

English

Mathieu Acher 29 French Yes Associate

Prof.

University of

Rennes 1, Inria,

IRISA

French,

English

Sana Ben Nasr - Tunisian Not yet PhD student Inria Arabic,

French,

English

Benoit Baudry - French Yes Research

Scientist,

Head of

Triskell team

Inria French,

English

Recovering from his PhD

N/A

N/A