Digital Product Memories: Perspective of Users and System Architects

Smart labels enable novel item-centric ways of communication along a product\´s lifecycle. With respect to the open nature of a scenario ranging from manufacturer to consumer, the expectations to such "smart items" are diverse. In this article, we discuss the perspective of potential users and system architects on selected aspects of so-called digital product memories. Our report aligns information we acquired from 332 visitors of a complex prototype system presented at a public IT fair, an internal questionnaire where 14 members of the project SemProM reported about their vision of this concept from an application and technology point of view, and the ongoing implementation works within that project. Our observations address to a large extent research issues related to smart items in general and thus do not only provide an insight to the research development process in this particular project, but also can be exploited for design decisions in other projects in this field.