StudioDirect
Project Summary
StudioDirect is the direct marketing arm of Li & Fung, a multi-national and multi-billion dollar sourcing agent for retailers of clothing and housewares. StudioDirect's on-line business provides smaller retailers with lower cost advantages by managing volume purchases. StudioDirect is comprised of a public facing Flash-based informational site and a registered retailer-only multi-tiered web application. For the Flash-based presentation, a design framework was created to facilitate the feel of a desktop environment - with familiar drop-down menus and paged displays highlighting the four main product areas. The registered retailer enterprise application is comprised of an on-line product browsing, customization and a Broadvision/Selectica powered ordering system. Both the product browsing and customization system had significant challenges as identified by needs assessment: principally, how to provide the most tactile-like experience for on-line users. This challenge was compounded by the ramifications of creating and managing a considerable amount of image data. The solution came in the form of Equilibrium's MediaRich image server which enables programmatic control over multi-layered Photoshop files. It became possible to design an interactive high resolution product zooming display as well as a dynamic interactive customization system for apparel products. Since the system is based around standard Photoshop files, content creation and management issues were simplified.
Client: Li & Fung Role: Product Imaging System Architect, DHTML/JS interfaces/MediaRich server-side scripting Development time: 3 months (10 months total project)