Method and system for visual cues to facilitate navigation through an ordered set of documents

• US 20130097494A1
• Filed: 10/17/2011
• Published: 04/18/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/17/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: St. Jacques, Robert J. Jr., McCorkindale, Mary Catherine
• Granted Patent: US 8,881,007 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/273
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/34 Browsing; Visualisation therefor

Abstract

Systems and methods for organizing a repository of unstructured documents into groups of ordered reading lists, i.e., document trails, comprising an ordered list of documents that relate to each by subject matter. Text analytics and natural language processing steps group documents, chose the most important/relevant documents from each group, and organize the documents into a suggested reading order. Document fragments are also analyzed by such analytic and processing steps to identify preselected fragment characteristic aspects. Documents within each document trail may be marked up or highlighted to indicate which paragraphs therein contain such aspects as novel or useful information, or information that is not useful or redundant.

Claims

1. A method of using visual cues to facilitate navigation through an ordered set of documents, comprising:

organizing the set of documents by a relationship to a topic as a document trail wherein the documents are prioritized in the trail based on usefulness to a user;

displaying a document to the user via a reader/display interface wherein the document is comprised of document fragments of content; and

applying a visual cue to a fragment during the displaying indicating a characteristic aspect of the fragment relative to the topic and other fragments of other documents in the document trail.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the applying a visual cue includes indicating a character aspect from one of newness, novelty, redundancy, and current relative position of a presented document in the trail.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the applying a visual cue indicating newness identifies a cued fragment as containing information common to an other fragment sequenced for subsequent presentation later in the document trail.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein the applying a visual cue indicating novelty identifies a cued fragment containing information only appearing in the presented document within the document trail.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein the applying a visual cue indicating redundancy identifies a cued fragment containing information that has been previously presented in earlier presented fragments in the document trail.

6. The method of claim 2 wherein the applying a visual cue indicating current relative position identifies a location in the overall sequence of documents comprising the document trail.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the applying a visual cue comprises displaying background color for the fragment representative of the characteristic aspect.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the applying a visual cue comprises presenting a distinctive textual adjustment of text format in the fragment.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the organizing preserves all content fragments of the presented document.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the applying a visual cue further includes displaying a tool tip communicating explanatory information of a presented visual cue for a fragment.

11. An ordered document reading list comprising:

a set of documents having a common relation to a topic, each document including fragments of content, and wherein the documents are arranged by strength of relation to the topic in a sequence of usefulness to a reader of the list; and

,

wherein selected fragments of content include visual cues indicating one of newness, novelty, redundancy or position in the list, for a displayed fragment in a presented document being read by the reader, relative to other documents in the list.

15. The list of claim 11 wherein the fragments comprise an entire content of the documents in the list, whereby fragment contextual meaning is maintained among the visual cues.

12. The list of claim 12 wherein the visual cues comprise highlighting of fragment text.

13. The list of claim 12 wherein the visual cues comprise blurring of fragment text.

14. The list of claim 12 wherein the visual cues comprise supplemental explanation of the fragment content.