Information presentation method and information recording medium and presentation device for implementing the method

• US 6,636,236 B1
• Filed: 05/11/1999
• Issued: 10/21/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 08/24/1998
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Toda, Manabu
• Primary Examiner(s): Kincaid, Kristine
• Assistant Examiner(s): VU, THANH T
• Application Number:
  US09/309,589
• Time in Patent Office: 1,624 Days
• Field of Search: 345/705, 345/707, 345/708, 345/709, 345/744, 345/745
• US Class Current: 715/707
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/724 User interfaces specially adapted for cordless or mobile telephones
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/7243 with interactive means for internal management of messages

Abstract

A primary object of the present invention is to provide an information presentation device capable of presenting operation support information such as operation process and an input operation procedure to help a user in doing input operation with an electronic apparatus and simplifying the presentation according to a degree of the user'"'"'s acquaintance with the operation of the apparatus, whereby enabling the user to more effectively use the apparatus with no unnecessary waiting time and with an increased efficiency of using the capacity of the memory device. A presentation control unit processes the presentation data for supporting the user'"'"'s inputting operation. To simplify the presentation information that may become unnecessary for a user who becomes aquatinted with the operation with the apparatus, a CPU is provided with data collecting means for collecting data for estimating a degree of necessity of the operation support information and discriminating means for discriminating necessity of the presentation. The estimate data includes user'"'"'s operation records such as the number of operation starts, the number of data presentations, an input-key operation speed and used capacity of a memory device. The discriminating means decides a degree of necessity of presenting the information and a degree of simplifying the presentation information according to the data obtained by the data collecting means. The presentation is simplified by thinning out the presentation images and/or shortening a presentation time.

Claims

1. In an electronic apparatus having an information presenting means, an information presenting method for presenting information by the information presentation means, the method comprising:

estimating a degree of necessity of presenting the information according to operation records and/or state information of the electronic apparatus;

based upon said estimating, determining whether to present the information in a detailed form or in a simplified form, wherein said determining is based at least in part upon a used capacity of memory of the apparatus; and

simplifying presentation information when it is determined in said determining step to present the information in a simplified form.

2. An information presentation method as defined in claim 1, wherein the presentation information is simplified by deleting at least a part of the information or by presenting another type of information having a smaller amount of data.

3. An information presentation method as defined in claim 1, wherein the information is presented as a sequence of animated images and simplified by reducing the number of images and/or shortening a presentation time for each of the images.

4. An information presentation method as defined in claim 1, wherein the information is presented as audio information and simplified by deleting at least a part of the audio information and/or by shortening an audio presentation time.

5. An information recording medium for recording information including program software and data for implementing the method defined in claim 1.

6. An information presentation device for presenting an operating process and/or an inputting procedure of an electronic apparatus provided with an inputting operation device and a presentation means, the device comprising:

data collecting means for collecting operation records of the electronic apparatus or working information including a current working state of the device;

discriminating means for determining the degree of necessity of presentation from the data collected by the data collecting means and deciding whether to change the presentation information according to a determined degree of necessity of the presentation; and

means for simplifying the presentation according to a decision made by the discriminating means; and

data erasing means for erasing data stored in a memory of the electronic apparatus and, when the discriminating means determines there is no need to present the information, causes the data erasing means to delete the unnecessary presentation data.

7. An information presentation device as defined in claim 6, wherein data collectable by the data collecting means is data representing operation records of the electronic apparatus, which data includes at least one of the following parameters:

the number of the apparatus operation starts, the number of the apparatus operation ends, the number of the presentation program starts, the number of the presentation program ends, the number of data presentations, an integrated operation time of the apparatus and a change in user'"'"'s input operation speed.

8. An information presentation device as defined in claim 6, wherein the data collectable by the data collecting means is the number of input operations made by a user during presentation of the specified information.

9. An information presentation device as defined in claim 6, wherein data collectable by the data collecting means is data representing used capacity and/or unused capacity of a memory of the electronic apparatus.

10. An information presenting device as defined in any one of claims 6 to 9, wherein the device is further provided with a data compressing means for compressing data stored in a memory of the electronic apparatus and, when the discriminating means decides it is unnecessary to present the information, causes the data compressing means to compress the unnecessary presentation data and/or the unnecessary program in the memory.

11. An information presentation device as defined in claim 10, wherein the device is further provided with a data restoring means for restoring compressed data in the memory of the electronic apparatus and a data changing means for changing an estimate value of data obtained by the data collecting means and causes the data restoring means to restore the compressed data and/or the program to an expanded state and stored in the memory and the data changing means to change the values of the estimate data obtained by the data collecting means.

12. An information presentation device as defined in claim 6, wherein the device is further provided with a nullifying means for nullifying the decision made by the discriminating means to prevent the presentation information from being simplified.

13. An information presentation device as defined in claim 6, wherein the presentation information is changed according to the decision made by the discriminating means in such a way that the presentation information is simplified in a plurality of stages corresponding to necessary degrees of the presentation.

14. An information presentation device as defined in claim 13, wherein simplification of the presentation information in a plurality of stages is conducted by thinning out the presentation data stored in a memory and/or shortening a presentation time.

15. An information presentation device as defined in claim 6, wherein a data is arranged in the memory of the electronic apparatus in such a way that erasable or compressible data of the presentation data and/or the presentation program is disposed next to an area of data to be updated any time at need.

16. An electronic apparatus comprising:

a radio communication device for transmitting and/or receiving radio communications;

a display for presenting information to a user;

a memory for storing the information to be presented to the user via said display, and/or other information;

a discriminating device for determining a skill level of a user, and when it is determined that the skill level of the user has increased beyond a threshold then erasing certain information from said memory thereby increasing available memory for the user.

17. The electronic apparatus of claim 16, wherein the discriminating device in carrying out said determining of the skill level of the user takes into consideration at least one of:

a) used capacity of the memory, b) speed of input operations input by the user, c) a number of operation starts of the electronic apparatus, d) a number of operation ends of the electronic apparatus, e) a number of starts and/or ends of a program stored in the electronic apparatus, f) change in the user'"'"'s input speed, and g) unused capacity of the memory.

18. The electronic apparatus of claim 16, wherein the information to be erased from the memory comprises at least one of display information, audio information, and program information.