CLOUD BASED MANAGEMENT OF AN IN-STORE DEVICE EXPERIENCE

• US 20120324440A1
• Filed: 06/16/2011
• Published: 12/20/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/16/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: GREENBAUM, GARY SCOTT
• Granted Patent: US 9,171,314 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/177
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3051 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring the configuration of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring the presence of processing resources, peripherals, I/O links, software programs verification or detection of system hardware configuration G06F11/2247
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3438 monitoring of user actions tracking the activity of the user H04L67/535
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3495 for systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/875 Monitoring of systems including the internet
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

The technology allows a user'"'"'s demo experience to be set up and maintained remotely. Retailers and vendors may remotely manage and update the user experience on demonstration devices. A package of applications that highlight a particular device'"'"'s capabilities can be selected and installed on demo versions of the particular device in stores all across the country. Usage information from the demonstration devices may be collected. With the collected information, retailers can ascertain user interest in particular devices and applications. Further, the user experience may be maintained and reset to default settings on a regular basis. Automatically resetting the experience maintains a consistent retail experience.

Claims

1. One or more computer-readable storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that when executed by a computing device performs a method of remotely managing applications that provide a retail experience on a demonstration device, the method comprising:

receiving identification information from a device that corresponds to a retail store and binding a retail store identification to the device;

receiving device information that describes device characteristics for the demonstration device;

generating, at a computing device, a relevant group of applications for installation on demonstration devices that conform with the device information, wherein the relevant group of applications are drawn from applications that are used to generate a consumer experience on demonstration devices; and

communicating the relevant group of applications to the demonstration device.

2. The media of claim 1, wherein the device information comprises a hardware configuration for the device.

3. The media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises communicating a list of the relevant group of applications to the demonstration device and receiving a selection of one or more applications from the device.

4. The media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises receiving a request from a store-experience controller, which specifies a consumer'"'"'s retail experience in the retail store, to install an additional application on the demonstration device and communicating the additional application to the demonstration device.

5. The media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises receiving a request from a brand-experience controller associated with a brand, which specifies a consumer'"'"'s retail experience for the brand'"'"'s demonstration devices in the retail store, to install an additional application on all demonstration devices conforming to a designated profile, determining that the demonstration device conforms to the designated profile, and communicating the additional application to the demonstration device.

6. The media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises communicating an instruction to the demonstration device to automatically reset a state of each of one or more applications to designated settings.

7. The media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises receiving a request from a brand-experience controller associated with a brand, which specifies a consumer'"'"'s retail experience for the brand'"'"'s demonstration devices in the retail store, to install an additional application on all of the brand'"'"'s devices conforming to a designated profile, determining that the demonstration device is the brand'"'"'s device and conforms to the designated profile, and communicating the additional application to the demonstration device.

8. A method of remotely managing a consumer experience in a retail store, the method comprising:

binding a plurality of devices to a retailer;

receiving a user-experience profile that specifies one or more device characteristics and a group of applications to be installed on devices that have the one or more device characteristics; and

communicating the group of applications to each device within the plurality of devices that conforms to the user-experience profile.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the method further comprises receiving additional user-experience profiles for different types of demonstration devices.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the group of applications is communicated with activation codes that allow the group of applications to be installed on a demonstration device without a need to pay for the group of applications.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein the method further comprises communicating a group of access codes for network based applications, wherein the group of access codes allows consumers to use the network based applications without paying.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein the method further comprises communicating a reset message to a demonstration device that instructs the demonstration device to reset one or more settings to an optimum value.

13. The method of claim 8, wherein the method further comprises receiving an update for an application within the group of applications, and, without human intervention, communicating the update to a demonstration device.

14. The method of claim 8, wherein the group of applications comprise one or more of applications that pull demonstration content from a network, applications that deliver core functionality of a demonstration device, and applications that provide specific demonstration functions.

15. The method of claim 8, wherein the method further comprises receiving a modification to the user-experience profile from the retailer.

16. One or more computer-readable storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied that when executed by a computing device perform a method of remotely managing content on a demonstration device within a retail setting, the method comprising:

communicating identification information from the demonstration device to a remote experience manager that operates on a different computing device, wherein the demonstration device is available for consumer interaction within a retail store;

receiving from the remote experience manager a group of applications and optimum values for one or more settings, wherein the group of applications and the optimum values are selected based on a user-experience profile;

installing the group of applications on the demonstration device; and

updating the one or more settings to match the optimum values.

17. The media of claim 16, wherein the method further comprises receiving one or more access codes that enable the demonstration device to access applications that run over a network.

18. The media of claim 16, wherein the method further comprises receiving, at the demonstration device, a new application to install, wherein the new application was added to the user-experience profile.

19. The media of claim 16, wherein the method further comprises receiving an instruction to reset the one or more settings to the optimum values.

20. The media of claim 16, wherein the method further comprises communicating consumer interaction information to the remote experience manager.