Product Empire — Serious play with barcodes

Despite the ubiquity of barcodes there exists no common product repository available today linking product master data to the corresponding barcodes. This paper proposes a social network game (Product Empire) that motivates users to scan barcodes and to enter basic product information, such as product name, brand and category and to upload a picture of the product. This user-generated product repository aims at providing a base to link real world objects with virtual information. After a first prototype has been implemented and applied in an informative user study we released an improved version to the public on the android market. Within 17 days 244 users have generated more than 990 product descriptions and cross checked product data 1230 times. These results show the potential of generating an open product repository by motivating users with a game approach related to social network games.