Method and system for providing scheduling suggestions

• US 9,348,897 B2
• Filed: 08/07/2013
• Issued: 05/24/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 08/07/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Bank, Jacob E, Toft, Kumiko T, Weiner, Zachary I, Shoham, Yoav, Ariely, Dan
• Primary Examiner(s): LeRoux, Etienne
• Application Number:
  US13/961,609
• Publication Number:
  US 20150046440A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,021 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/335 Filtering based on additional data, e.g. user or group profiles filtering in web context G06F16/9535, G06F16/9536
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting

Abstract

A system, computer-readable storage medium storing at least one program, and computer-implemented method for providing scheduling suggestions to a user. A collection of intention objects is accessed. Each of the intention objects is a data structure comprising a plurality of activity attributes of an intention of a user to undertake an activity. Calendar data from a calendar of the user is accessed and an available time slot on the calendar is determined. In response to determining the available time slot, a suggested intention object is selected from the collection of intention objects based on a plurality of activity attributes of the suggested intention object. A scheduling suggestion is then presented to the user. The scheduling suggestion may include a suggestion to schedule an activity associated with the suggested intention object in the available time slot.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, the method comprising:

accessing a collection of intention objects, each intention object of the collection of intention objects being associated with an activity and comprising one or more temporal attributes and one or more contextual attributes including a location associated with the activity;

determining a relevancy of each of the intention objects based on a current time, a current location, and the location included in the one or more contextual attributes of each of the intention objects;

presenting the intention objects to a user in an order based on their respective relevancies;

selecting one of the intention objects based on the one or more temporal attributes, the one or more contextual attributes, and the determined relevancy, the selected intention object being other than an intention object with a greatest relevancy;

providing a scheduling suggestion to the user, the scheduling suggestion including a suggestion to schedule the activity associated with the selected intention object;

causing the selected intention object to be scheduled on the calendar of the user in response to the user dragging and dropping the selected intention object on a first portion of a user interface of the system;

causing a reminder to be set for the selected intention object in response to the user dragging and dropping the selected intention object on a second portion of the user interface of the system;

associating the selected intention object with another intention object in response to the user dragging the selected intention object over the other intention object, the association requiring an activity associated with the selected intention object to be performed before an activity associated with the other intention object;

updating a relevancy ranking of at least one of the intention objects based on a time of day being later than a time included in the intention object without the user indicating that an activity associated with the intention object has been completed; and

changing a state of the at least one intention object from an active state to an inactive state based on the updated relevancy ranking.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising updating calendar data such that the activity associated with the selected intention object is scheduled during an available time slot.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying one or more intention objects included in the collection of intention objects that are in an active state; and

presenting a user with a free form spatial user interface including graphical representations of the one or more identified intention objects.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising presenting the user with a translucent view of a calendar with the scheduled activity overlaid on the free form spatial user interface.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining that the relevancy corresponding to a particular intention object of the collection of intention objects is below a predefined threshold, an activity associated with the particular intention object being scheduled on a calendar;

in response to determining that the relevancy is below a predefined threshold, updating the particular intention object to be in an inactive state; and

unscheduling the activity from the calendar in response to the particular intention object being in the inactive state while storing the intention object in the inactive state.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving user input indicating that a particular intention object be added to a calendar of the user, the user input comprising a single touch screen gesture; and

scheduling the particular intention object on the calendar such that the activity becomes a calendar event.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising sharing a particular intention object with an additional user.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising adding the particular intention object to a collection of intention objects of the additional user.

9. The method of claim 7, further comprising scheduling an activity corresponding to the particular intention object on a calendar of the additional user.

10. A tangible machine-readable storage medium embodying instructions that, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

generating a collection of intention objects by parsing emails to determine activity attributes, each intention object of the collection of intention objects comprising a data structure including a plurality of the determined activity attributes, at least one of the intention objects being in an active state and at least one of the intention objects being in an inactive state;

assessing calendar data from a calendar of a user;

determining an available time slot on the calendar;

in response to determining the available time slot, selecting a suggested intention object from the collection of intention objects based on a plurality of activity attributes of the suggested intention object and whether the suggested intention object is in the active state or the inactive state;

providing a scheduling suggestion to the user, the scheduling suggestion including a suggestion to schedule an activity associated with the suggested intention object in the available time slot;

causing the suggested intention object to be scheduled on the calendar of the user in response to the user dragging and dropping the suggested intention object on a first portion of a user interface of the machine;

causing a reminder to be set for the suggested intention object in response to the user dragging and dropping the suggested intention object on a second portion of the user interface of the machine; and

associating the suggested intention object with another intention object in response to the user dragging the suggested intention object over the other intention object, the association requiring an activity associated with the suggested intention object to be performed before an activity associated with the other intention object.

11. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 10, further comprising instructions that, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to update the calendar data such that the activity associated with the suggested intention object is scheduled during the available time slot.

12. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 11, further comprising instructions that, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

receiving a user input from a client device of the user, the user input being a single touch screen gesture to remove the suggested intention object from the calendar; and

in response to the user input, configuring the suggested intention object to be in an inactive state and removing the suggested intention object from the calendar.

13. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 10, further comprising instructions that, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

identifying one or more intention objects included in the collection of intention objects that are in an active state; and

presenting the user with a free form spatial user interface including the one or more identified intention objects.

14. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 10, further comprising instructions that, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to determine a relevancy rank for each intention object of the collection of intention objects based on a plurality of activity attributes comprised by each intention object, the relevancy rank indicating a suggested order in which the user undertake each respective activity.

15. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 14, further comprising instructions that, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

determining that the relevancy rank corresponding to a particular intention object of the collection of intention objects is below a predefined threshold, an activity associated with the particular intention object being scheduled on the calendar;

in response to determining that the relevancy rank is below a predefined threshold, updating the particular intention object to be in an inactive state; and

unscheduling the activity from the calendar of the user in response to the particular intention object being in the inactive state while storing the intention object in the inactive state.

16. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 10, further comprising instructions that, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

receiving user input indicating that a particular intention object be added to the calendar of the user, the user input comprising a single touch screen gesture; and

scheduling the particular intention object on the calendar such that the activity becomes a calendar event.

17. A system comprising:

a processor of a machine;

a calendar module configured to;

assess calendar data from a calendar of a user and access a collection of intention objects, each intention object of the collection of intention objects comprising a data structure including a plurality of activity attributes, the plurality of activity attributes comprising one or more temporal attributes and one or more contextual attributes including a location associated with the activity, the one or more temporal attributes defining time constraints related to the activity attributes, a precision of the one or more temporal attributes being based on a user choice between at least two of an exact time, an approximate time, a time range, an exact date, an approximate date, a date range, and a season, at least one of the intention objects being in an active state and at least one of the intention objects being in an inactive state; and

determine, using the processor of the machine, an available time slot on the calendar, and in response to the determining the available time slot, select a suggested intention object from the collection of intention objects based on a plurality of activity attributes of the suggested intention object and whether the suggested intention object is in the active state or the inactive state; and

a communication module configured to;

provide a scheduling suggestion to the user, the scheduling suggestion including a suggestion to schedule an activity associated with the suggested intention object in the available time slot;

cause the suggested intention object to be scheduled on the calendar of the user in response to the user dragging and dropping the suggested intention object on a first portion of a user interface of the system; and

cause a reminder to be set for the suggested intention object in response to the user dragging and dropping the suggested intention object on a second portion of the user interface of the system.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the calendar module is further configured to:

update a relevancy ranking of at least one of the intention objects based on a time of day being later than a time included in the intention object without the user indicating that an activity associated with the intention object has been completed; and

change a state of the at least one intention object from an active state to an inactive state based on the updated relevancy ranking.

19. A tangible machine-readable storage medium embodying instructions that, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

accessing a collection of intention objects, each intention object comprising one or more temporal attributes and one or more contextual attributes including a location associated with an activity, a precision of the one or more temporal attributes being refined based on user input;

assessing calendar data from a calendar of the user;

determining an available time slot on the calendar;

in response to determining the available time slot, selecting a suggested intention object from the collection of intention objects based on a plurality of activity attributes of the suggested intention object;

providing a scheduling suggestion to the user, the scheduling suggestion including a suggestion to schedule an activity associated with the suggested intention object in the available time slot;

causing the suggested intention object to be scheduled on the calendar of the user in response to the user dragging and dropping the suggested intention object on a first portion of a user interface of the machine; and

causing a reminder to be set for the suggested intention object in response to the user dragging and dropping the suggested intention object on a second portion of the user interface of the machine.

20. The tangible machine-readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein the precision is refined based on a user choice between at least two of an exact time, an approximate time, a time range, an exact date, an approximate date, a date range, and a season.