Bounded-deferral policies for reducing the disruptiveness of notifications
First Claim
1. A notification system, comprising:
- a monitor that monitors likely available states of an entity; and
a bounding system that classifies a notification to the entity according to a predefined protocol and the likely available states, the bounding system facilitating deferral of the notification based at least in part on the notification classification.
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Accused Products
Abstract
The present invention relates to a system and methodology for reducing disruption costs associated with notifying a user of messages, automated assistance, and/or alerts. According to one aspect of the present invention, bounded-deferral policies may be employed within a notification platform, wherein one or more messages of varying degrees of assigned and/or context-driven priority are relayed to users with a deferral policy guided by the priority and determined states of the users. Users can define available free states according to such inputs as a calendar and time of day. Lower priority messages can be delayed until a more interruptible period of time for the user such as during a sensed or predicted completion of a task, a break or pause in desktop activities, a break in office collaboration activities (pause in conversation), or reduced driving load, such as coming to a stop (in an automobile setting). Higher priority messages can be immediately forwarded to users or sent after a predetermined time configured by the user.
570 Citations
54 Claims
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1. A notification system, comprising:
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a monitor that monitors likely available states of an entity; and
a bounding system that classifies a notification to the entity according to a predefined protocol and the likely available states, the bounding system facilitating deferral of the notification based at least in part on the notification classification. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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21. A method to minimize notification disruption costs, comprising,
tagging one or more notifications with a value; -
determining available user states;
defining one or more time bounds based upon the value; and
deferring the one or more notifications until at least one of the available user states, and the one or more time bounds. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)
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31. A system to minimize disruption costs, comprising,
means for tagging one or more messages with a value; -
means for determining available free states;
means for specifying one or more time bounds based upon the value; and
means for deferring the one or more messages until at least one of the available free states, and the one or more time bounds. - View Dependent Claims (32)
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33. A method to display notifications, comprising,
chunking of notifications; - and
displaying the chunks based upon a likely free state and as ordered by at least one of priority, age, and priority by group. - View Dependent Claims (35, 37, 38)
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34. A notification system, comprising:
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a context monitor that monitors likely available states of an entity; and
a notification agent that classifies a notification to the entity according to a max deferral and the likely available states, the notification agent facilitating deferral of the notification based at least in part on the notification classification.
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36. A method to journal notifications, comprising:
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maintaining a global journal for one or more notifications;
providing a more detailed notification window within the journal; and
providing notifications to at least one of the global journal and the notification window based upon one or more bounded notification deferral policies.
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39. A method to associate priority information with messages, comprising:
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appending a priority value to one or more notifications;
tagging the one or more notifications with application-specific contexts from a set of contexts; and
rendering the one or more notifications within an active context from the set of contexts.
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40. A method to determine available users states in a notification system, comprising:
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determining a frequency users are available at a desktop;
determining a frequency when alerts are received by the user; and
inferring an expected time until a next likely free state.
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41. A method to provide mobile notifications, comprising:
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inferring one or more available free states from a mobile device; and
sending notifications to a user based upon at least one of the one or more available free states and a bounded deferral policy. - View Dependent Claims (42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49)
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45. A tool for configuring deferral policies, comprising:
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a user interface to assess one or more points of mapping a continuous priority to a function that yields a deferral bound via extrapolation from one or more other points; and
one or more inputs associated with the user interface to adjust the deferral policies.
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50. A method providing bounded deferral of communications, comprising:
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determining changes in a user'"'"'s activities;
determining an availability state based upon the user'"'"'s activities; and
providing prioritized information to the user based upon the availability state. - View Dependent Claims (51, 52, 53, 54)
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Specification