Systems and methods for generating adaptive surveys and review prose

• US 9,721,265 B2
• Filed: 01/09/2013
• Issued: 08/01/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 01/09/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: PowerReviews OC LLC (Powerreviews Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: PowerReviews OC LLC (Powerreviews Incorporated)
• Inventors: Olander, III, Gilbert T., Lubkert, Christopher, Lobraco, Joe, Dillard, Brian
• Primary Examiner(s): Brockington, III, William
• Assistant Examiner(s): Sadananda, Abhijit B
• Application Number:
  US13/737,668
• Publication Number:
  US 20140193794A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,665 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0203 Market surveys; Market polls
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 7/06 of the multiple-choice answer-type, i.e. where a given question is provided with a series of answers and a choice has to be made from the answers

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for generating adaptive surveys including questions and answer options selectable by users, and human-readable review prose based on answers to the questions. The survey may be related to an assessment of a business, and may be transmitted to a user electronic device. The generated survey may include one or more questions with selectable answer options. The selection of the answer options can be received from the user electronic device, and be used to generate the prose for the review. The user and/or the business may edit the prose and/or modify the intensity of the generated review. Tree data structures may be utilized to generate the questions of the survey, to store the answers, and generate the sentences of the review. Analytic data may be generated based on the selected answer options, which can be used to assess and influence marketing and business efforts.

Claims

1. A method for generating a survey and a review for a business, the review comprising human-readable prose generated based on the survey, the method comprising:

generating the survey comprising at least one question associated with the business and a plurality of answer options for the at least one question, using a processor;

transmitting the survey from the processor to an electronic device associated with a user;

receiving a selection of at least one answer from the plurality of answer options at the processor from the electronic device associated with the user;

storing the selection of the at least one answer in a database as one or more answer trees having one or more answer nodes, using a survey generation engine of the processor, wherein each of the one or more answer nodes corresponds to i) an answer selected by the user for a particular question, ii) a sentence value for the answer, and iii) a syntactic type of the sentence value;

automatically generating i) the human-readable prose of the review based on a plurality of sentence templates and the one or more answer trees, and ii) business analytic data based on the selection of the at least one answer, using the processor;

transmitting the review from the processor to the electronic device associated with the user;

receiving an edited review at the processor from the electronic device associated with the user;

transmitting the edited review from the processor to an electronic device associated with the business;

receiving an approval of the edited review at the processor from the electronic device associated with the business; and

storing the edited review and the business analytic data in the database, using the processor, wherein the edited review is associated with the business;

wherein each of the plurality of sentence templates comprises a semantic sentence type, a sentiment type, text, and a narrative type;

wherein automatically generating the human-readable prose of the review comprises;

traversing the one or more answer trees to determine the syntactic types that correspond to each of the one or more answer nodes;

selecting a respective sentence template for each of the one or more answer nodes, from the plurality of sentence templates, that has a semantic sentence type that matches the syntactic type of the answer node; and

generating, for each of the one or more answer nodes, a sentence of the human-readable prose of the review based on the selected sentence template and the sentence value that corresponds to the answer node.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the business analytic data comprises:

analyzing the selection of the at least one answer and the edited review to generate the business analytic data, using the processor, wherein the business analytic data is related to one or more of the business or a category of the business; and

transmitting the business analytic data from the processor to the electronic device associated with the business.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining whether the user is logged in, in response to receiving the edited review, using the processor;

associating the edited review with the user, using the processor, if the user is logged in; and

if the user is not logged in;

receiving a user identification at the processor from the electronic device associated with the user;

determining whether the user identification matches an existing account in the database, using the processor;

associating the edited review with the user, using the processor, if the user identification matches the existing account; and

if the user identification does not match the existing account;

creating an account for the user, using the processor; and

associating the edited review with the user, using the processor.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein:

generating the survey comprises;

determining a choice tree corresponding to the business, using the processor, wherein the choice tree is stored in the database and comprises a plurality of choice nodes, wherein each of the plurality of choice nodes has a plurality of child choice nodes, and wherein each of the plurality of choice nodes and each of the plurality of child choice nodes comprises a question text value and a question choice value;

generating the at least one question based on the question text value of one of the plurality of choice nodes, using the processor; and

generating the plurality of answer options based on the question choice value of each of a plurality of child choice nodes of the one of the plurality of choice nodes, using the processor; and

transmitting the survey comprises transmitting the at least one question and the plurality of answer options from the processor to the electronic device associated with the user.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein determining the choice tree comprises determining the choice tree corresponding to a category of the business, using the processor.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein generating the at least one question comprises substituting the question text value of the one of the plurality of choice nodes into a question text to generate the at least one question, using the processor.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein:

generating the survey further comprises;

generating the at least one question based on the question text value of one of the plurality of choice nodes and based on the plurality of answer options that were not part of the selection of the at least one answer, using the processor; and

generating the plurality of answer options based on the question choice value of each of the plurality of child choice nodes of the one of the plurality of choice nodes that were not part of the selection of the at least one answer, using the processor; and

transmitting the survey comprises transmitting the at least one question and the plurality of answer options from the processor to the electronic device associated with the user.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the survey comprises:

transmitting a free response text answer field from the processor to the electronic device associated with the user, receiving contents of the free response text answer field at the processor from the electronic device associated with the user, and storing the contents of the free response text answer field in the database, using the processor.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more answer trees include an answer tree in the database, wherein the answer tree comprises a root answer node and a plurality of child answer nodes of the root answer node, wherein the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes comprises an answer value, wherein each of the plurality of child answer nodes corresponds to a choice node indicated by the answer value and included in a choice tree corresponding to the business, and wherein the choice node comprises the syntactic type and the sentence value that correspond to the answer node;

generating the human-readable prose of the review comprises;

determining the syntactic type for the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes of the root answer node, using the processor;

generating a list of child answer nodes with the syntactic types that are the same, using the processor;

determining at least one of the plurality of sentence templates for the root answer node and each of the list of child answer nodes with the syntactic types that are the same, using the processor, based on the answer value of the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes, and the semantic sentence type, the sentiment type, the text, and the narrative type of each of the plurality of sentence templates; and

generating the sentence of the human-readable prose of the review based on the sentence value of the choice node corresponding to the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes, and the at least one of the plurality of sentence templates for the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes, using the processor.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the syntactic type comprises one or more of a verb, a noun, an adjective, or a sentence fragment.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein generating the sentence of the review comprises substituting the sentence value of the choice node corresponding to the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes into the at least one of the plurality of sentence templates for the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes, using the processor.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a trigger to generate the survey at the processor from the electronic device associated with the user, wherein the trigger is based on one or more of a geofence trigger, a near field communication trigger, a quick response code trigger, an email trigger, an SMS trigger, or a web site trigger.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the edited review comprises one or more of a change to the human-readable prose of the review or a change in intensity of the prose of the review.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the edited review comprises the review.

15. A system for generating a survey and a review for a business, the review comprising human-readable prose generated based on the survey, the system comprising:

a processor in communication with a network;

a memory in communication with the processor, the memory for storing;

a survey database and a review database;

a survey generation engine that configures the processor for;

generating the survey comprising at least one question associated with the business and a plurality of answer options for the at least one question;

transmitting the survey to an electronic device associated with a user;

receiving a selection of at least one answer from the plurality of answer options from the electronic device associated with the user; and

storing the selection of the at least one answer in the survey database as one or more answer trees having one or more answer nodes, wherein each of the one or more answer nodes corresponds to i) an answer selected by the user for a particular question, ii) a sentence value for the answer, and iii) a syntactic type of the sentence value;

a review generation engine that configures the processor for;

automatically generating i) the human-readable prose of the review based on a plurality of sentence templates and the one or more answer trees, and ii) business analytic data based on the selection of the at least one answer;

transmitting the review to the electronic device associated with the user;

receiving an edited review from the electronic device associated with the user, transmitting the edited review to an electronic device associated with the business;

receiving an approval of the edited review from the electronic device associated with the business; and

storing the edited review and the business analytic data in the review database, wherein the edited review is associated with the business;

wherein each of the plurality of sentence templates comprises a semantic sentence type, a sentiment type, text, and a narrative type;

wherein the review generation engine configures the processor for;

traversing the one or more answer trees to determine the syntactic types that correspond to each of the one or more answer nodes;

selecting a respective sentence template for each of the one or more answer nodes, from the plurality of sentence templates, that has a semantic sentence type that matches the syntactic type of the answer node;

generating, for each of the one or more answer nodes, a sentence of the human-readable prose of the review based on the selected sentence template and the sentence value that corresponds to the answer node.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising an analytics engine that configures the processor for:

analyzing the selection of the at least one answer and the edited review to generate the business analytic data, wherein the business analytic data is related to one or more of the business or a category of the business; and

transmitting the business analytic data to the electronic device associated with the business.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein:

the memory further comprises an account database; and

the review generation engine configures the processor for;

determining whether the user is logged in, in response to receiving the edited review;

associating the edited review with the user, if the user is logged in; and

if the user is not logged in;

receiving a user identification from the electronic device associated with the user;

determining whether the user identification matches an existing account in the account database;

associating the edited review with the user, if the user identification matches the existing account; and

if the user identification does not match the existing account;

creating an account for the user; and

associating the edited review with the user.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein:

the survey generation engine configures the processor for;

determining a choice tree corresponding to the business, wherein the choice tree is stored in the survey database and comprises a plurality of choice nodes, wherein each of the plurality of choice nodes has a plurality of child choice nodes, and wherein each of the plurality of choice nodes and each of the plurality of child choice nodes comprises a question text value and a question choice value;

generating the at least one question based on the question text value of one of the plurality of choice nodes; and

generating the plurality of answer options based on the question choice value of each of a plurality of child choice nodes of the one of the plurality of choice nodes; and

transmitting the at least one question and the plurality of answer options to the electronic device associated with the user.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the survey generation engine configures the processor for determining the choice tree by determining the choice tree corresponding to a category of the business.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the survey generation engine configures the processor for generating the at least one question by substituting the question text value of the one of the plurality of choice nodes into a question text to generate the at least one question.

21. The system of claim 18, wherein the survey generation engine configures the processor for:

generating the at least one question based on the question text value of one of the plurality of choice nodes and based on the plurality of answer options that were not part of the selection of the at least one answer;

generating the plurality of answer options based on the question choice value of each of the plurality of child choice nodes of the one of the plurality of choice nodes that were not part of the selection of the at least one answer; and

transmitting the at least one question and the plurality of answer options to the electronic device associated with the user.

22. The system of claim 15, wherein the survey generation engine configures the processor for:

transmitting a free response text answer field to the electronic device associated with the user;

receiving contents of the free response text answer field from the electronic device associated with the user; and

storing the contents of the free response text answer field in the survey database.

23. The system of claim 15, wherein the one or more answer trees include an answer tree in the survey database, wherein the answer tree comprises a root answer node and a plurality of child answer nodes of the root answer node, wherein the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes comprises an answer value, wherein each of the plurality of child answer nodes corresponds to a choice node indicated by the answer value and included in a choice tree corresponding to the business, and wherein the choice node comprises the syntactic type and the sentence value that correspond to the answer node;

the review generation engine configures the processor for;

determining the syntactic type for the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes of the root answer node;

generating a list of child answer nodes with the syntactic types that are the same;

determining at least one of the plurality of sentence templates for the root answer node and each of the list of child answer nodes with the syntactic types that are the same, based on the answer value of the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes, and the semantic sentence type, the sentiment type, the text, and the narrative type of each of the plurality of sentence templates; and

generating the sentence of the human-readable prose of the review based on the sentence value of the choice node corresponding to the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes, and the at least one of the plurality of sentence templates for the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the syntactic type comprises one or more of a verb, a noun, an adjective, or a sentence fragment.

25. The system of claim 23, wherein the review generation engine configures the processor for substituting the sentence value of the choice node corresponding to the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes into the at least one of the plurality of sentence templates for the root answer node and each of the plurality of child answer nodes.

26. The system of claim 15, wherein the survey generation engine configures the processor for:

receiving a trigger to generate the survey from the electronic device associated with the user, wherein the trigger is based on or more of a geofence trigger, a near field communication trigger, a quick response code trigger, an email trigger, or a website trigger.

27. The system of claim 15, wherein the edited review comprises one or more of a change to the human-readable prose of the review or a change in intensity of the prose of the review.

28. The system of claim 15, wherein the edited review comprises the review.