I was once asked what exactly is an Exceptional Experience from an engineering perspective?   I point to a highly technical site we did a couple of years ago: Lemo.com . It a guides the user (engineers) through the selection process of millions of possible connectors in a simple way.

You can choose to pick one characteristic at a time via visual browse.

Or advanced users can have access to all criteria at once in the advanced search.

Either way you narrow down to a single connector from the millions available in a few steps. And once you find a connector, you can explore the space around it, by asking for its mate, or similar connectors that differ by only one characteristic, and so on.

This was an EE for this client because they reported that this site was so effective, it dramatically moved their company’s position in the market. Formerly they were considered a company with quality products, but conservative and old fashioned. This site made them the perceived market leader in the custom connector business.

Why was it an engineering EE? Because it wasn’t the graphics, it wasn’t the content, and it wasn’t the IA that made the site stand out, as good as they were. It was the innovative use of a highly dynamic infrastructure that interacted intensively with the database on every page and in transitioning to the next page. Every page you were on reflected the choices you had made previously to get there.

This site is a great example of how Organic took one of those technical sites that are usually done very badly, and added tremendous value with their approach.

Jim Allen