Intelligent user assistance facility
First Claim
1. An inference system for use in an intelligent user assistance facility system for a software program, the inference system comprising:
- a knowledge base, the knowledge base storing information relating to at least variables that represent observable states regarding user-initiated actions within the software program, and to variables that represent hypotheses about goals and needs for assistance of the user relative to the software program; and
an inference engine, the inference engine identifying help-oriented actions that a user can perform in the software program to render operation of the software program easier for the user, the help-oriented actions optimizing expected utility of the user within the software program given a cost of displaying the help-oriented actions without initiation by the user, and the goals and needs for assistance of the user relative to the software program as stored in the knowledge base, such that at least one of the help-oriented actions are displayed to the user by the intelligent user assistance facility system, and one or more of the at least one of the help-oriented actions displayed to the user are performed by the user within the software program.
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Abstract
An intelligent user assistance system is disclosed. The system is constructed using a reasoning model to determine the probability of a user'"'"'s intentions, goals, or informational needs in the context of a software program. This is accomplished through analysis of information about the user'"'"'s actions, the program state, and spoken words. The system monitors user interaction with the software program and applies probabilistic reasoning to sense that the user may need assistance in using a particular feature or to accomplish a specific task. The inference system accesses a thorough and updateable user profile system to continually check for competencies and changes assistance that is given based on the competencies.
384 Citations
13 Claims
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1. An inference system for use in an intelligent user assistance facility system for a software program, the inference system comprising:
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a knowledge base, the knowledge base storing information relating to at least variables that represent observable states regarding user-initiated actions within the software program, and to variables that represent hypotheses about goals and needs for assistance of the user relative to the software program; and
an inference engine, the inference engine identifying help-oriented actions that a user can perform in the software program to render operation of the software program easier for the user, the help-oriented actions optimizing expected utility of the user within the software program given a cost of displaying the help-oriented actions without initiation by the user, and the goals and needs for assistance of the user relative to the software program as stored in the knowledge base, such that at least one of the help-oriented actions are displayed to the user by the intelligent user assistance facility system, and one or more of the at least one of the help-oriented actions displayed to the user are performed by the user within the software program. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. An inference engine for use in an inference system in conjunction with an intelligent assistance facility system for a software program, the inference engine comprising:
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a Bayesian network comprising nodes representing hypotheses about goals and needs for assistance of the user relative to the software program, and nodes representing observed evidence regarding user-initiated actions within the software program; and
temporal reasoning approximation functionality associated with at least one of the observed evidence nodes, the functionality determining a probability of relevance as the probability changes with passage of time, and identifying help-oriented actions corresponding to the hypotheses nodes that a user can perform in the software program to render operation of the software program easier for the user, such that at least one of the help-oriented actions are displayed to the user by the intelligent user assistance facility system, and one or more of the at least one of the help-oriented actions displayed to the user are performed by the user within the software program. - View Dependent Claims (8)
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9. A method for an inference system to autonomously acquire unobserved information from a user to assist in determining suggested user assistance, comprising:
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ordering a list of a plurality of items of the unobserved information from highest to lowest value;
proceeding down the list by performing for a given item of the list;
determining a benefit of obtaining of the given item;
determining a cost of distracting the user to obtain the given item;
in response to the benefit exceeding the cost, submitting a request to the user to provide the given item;
until occurrence of one of;
the user fails to respond to the request, and the cost exceeds the benefit.
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10. A method for improving accuracy of a speech recognition system used in conjunction with an intelligent assistant facility system for a software program, the method comprising
detecting user-initiated actions within the software; - program,
composing high-level modeled events from the user-initiated actions according to event composition rules defined in an event specification, employing probabilistic inference to determine a probability distribution of goals and needs for assistance of a user relative to the software program from the high-level modeled events, modifying probabilities of the words in a language model database that are recognized by the speech recognition system based on the probability distribution, detecting speech of the user, and recognizing the speech of the user as one or more of the words in the language model database, based on the probabilities of the words in the language model database as have been modified based on the probability distribution of the goals and needs for assistance of the user relative to the software program. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13)
- program,
Specification