Customers Perspective on Mass-customization of Houses

This paper presents the results of usability tests of HOPLA (Home Planner), a computer-assisted design system developed to enable customization of house designs. The study aimed to verify whether the proposed method allows non-expert users to configure a house design that meets their expectations in a limited time. The experiments were carried out in two modes of the tool: M mode - modification of a proposed design and S mode - configuration of a design from scratch. The study encompassed two independent experiments carried out on two continents and examined the impact of cultural differences on the expectations of non-expert users towards computer-assisted customization of single-family houses.