Parasoleil Project Creator

Background

Parasoleil always thought about the next cool thing they could do. The Project Creator arose out of a need to streamline one of their sales funnels and a desire to create unique customer experiences. Mid-tier projects consumed a disproportionate amount of Parasoleil's time. Wouldn't it be great if we could build an online app which allowed customers to exercise a high degree of creativity while automating the mid-tier sales process?

About the Project

The Project Creator was a complicated beast with branching paths and nuanced requirements. For timing reasons, development needed to start before the product was fully specified. As a result, I took a highly modular approach to ensure components could be shifted, changed or even removed without compromising the overall product.

The initial step was to create prototypes for the key features of the application-- the customization of panel arrays, applying patterns to panels, transforming the patterns within a panel, addition of finishes panels, and the export of a production-ready shop file from the result.

After prototype success, I got started on the user flow. Each step collected crucial information from users, so we added inline validation that would not let users advance steps until all information was complete. I added the ability for users to select the variables over which they had control, and hooked in business logic that ran calculations based on user selections.

The end result is a product that can replicate the guidance and design of a Parasoleil sales person, create full projects, calculate costs (including taxes and shipping), accept payments for orders, and export pre-shop files to Parasoleil to begin production on projects at a rapid pace.