Dawud Gordon, Michael Beigl
Distributed and Ubiquitous Computing, Institute for Operating Systems and Computer Networks, Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany

Masayuki Iwai
Department of Informatics and Electronics, Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Japan

This paper presents the outcome of a formative study – experiences and requirements – on using wireless sensor network technology in retail stores. The study was carried out in several steps. _ First, a simple approach to implementing a wireless sensor network system was used by a developer for building a retail store application. Here we collected experiences about the problems in the application implementation process. _ Second, the system was deployed in a real retail store. Here we collected feedback from customers and from retail store staff about the system, its usefulness and integration into the overall daily business workflow. _ Third, we analyzed requirements for the next generation of improved wireless sensor network systems by performing a requirements study. We will report our initial results of the requirements analysis study. The findings indicate a lack of abstraction from the technical details of the system needed to enable a high-level developer to create an application for a retail scenario, and we will list some of the important issues that need to be addressed.