The Internet has increased the opportunities to apply the concept of mass customization to customer interaction by tailoring the content as individual needs. Within limited design parameters, customers can determine what options they wish by participating in the flow of the design process from the beginning. This concept has already been implemented in the computer, clothing, and automobile industries, but it has not been fully integrated in architecture, especially the housing industry which is more directly related with personal life style.
  
If mass production and prefabrication methods of the assembly line were the ideal of architecture in the early twentieth century, then mass customization and the development of digital technology are the recently emerged paradigms of the twenty-first century. The development of the digital revolution has already prompted the shift towards mass customization. In this new industrial model, computer-aided manufacturing facilitates variations of the same product. The internet has increased the opportunities to apply the concept of mass customization to customer interaction by tailoring the content to individual needs. By integrating the nature of modularity in prefabricated housing design, a proposed web-based design advisory system will provide information filtering questionnaires to assist customers in selecting appropriate design components.

In order to achieve the goal of customizing modular houses online, the conceptual design model combines the result of two parts: data collection of client’s requirement and modular system design combinations. The web-based prototype can simulate the interaction between clients and the adoptable systems. The evaluation part can be done by live meeting with architects and engineers via online collaboration tools. Virtual design model will be made by BIM (Building Information Modeling) applications to streamline the delivery process from design to manufacturing. Finally, the BIM design model can be reviewed with real site context via Google Earth before sending the ready-to-build digital information model and building specifications to the collective manufacturers and suppliers.

The process and constraint of providing mass-customized prefabricated housing based on a digital questionnaire format in this prototype will be discussed. This approach of integrating mass customization into prefabricated housing will encourage architects and manufacturers to develop a series of design solutions rather than a single product to meet the client’s need. On the other hand, clients may use this system as an advisory tool to customize the house design from spatial layout to detail preference with provided information. Utilizing digital technologies to gather information from clients is an alternative to replace the limited face-to-face meeting time between architects and clients. The research is still work-in-progress. The expected results has threefold: (1) to provide the identified issues of client determination by the digital configurator, (2) to influence the design of modular systems to be more client responsive, and (3) to forecast the potential of BIM to improve the project delivery process in housing industry.
