Sources and Characteristics of Information about Product Use

Knowledge about the activities happening beyond the point of sale is valuable for product and product-service design. In the product design community, the importance of this knowledge is accepted for several years, for instance through concepts like participatory design, as well as the living lab movement. An extensive involvement of users, in order to gain the desired knowledge, may proof time consuming and thus too expensive. Therefore, it appears expedient to utilize the existing information that is generated beyond the point of sale as effective as possible. In order to support research in this field, this paper provides an overview about different types of currently existing product information originating from the so-called middle of life phase. The overview is based on application cases that belong to different research and innovation projects, as well as practical examples from internet-based services. It briefly covers, for instance, data from embedded information devices, maintenance information, user-generated contents such as videos and product reviews. Within the subsequent discussion, some characteristics of middle of life information are highlighted. The characteristics are related to the different appearance of information and concern, e.g. differences among measured and articulated information, as well as the relation between instance- and class-based product information.