Relationship view

• US 7,689,525 B2
• Filed: 10/02/2006
• Issued: 03/30/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/22/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Glatzer, Asta L., Wong, Curtis G., Drucker, Steven M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Vincent; David R
• Assistant Examiner(s): Fernandez Rivas; Omar F
• Application Number:
  US11/537,763
• Publication Number:
  US 20070033220A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,275 Days
• Field of Search: 706/11, 706/14, 706/15, 706/18, 706/20, 706/45, 715200-204, 715/241, 715243-246, 715/767, 715788-794, 715817-821, 715/835, 715/845, 715850-862
• US Class Current: 706/45
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/41 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/44 Browsing; Visualisation therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/48 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

The present invention provides a unique method and user interface that facilitates accessing and browsing objects in which a user begins with a center object (e.g., one or a few focal objects) displayed on a screen and related objects are populated on the screen as well. The related objects can be further organized into clusters whereby each cluster or grouping of objects expands on a particular attribute of the center object. The attributes correspond to metadata. Thus, the objects are populated based upon the metadata of the center object. According to one aspect, the user can access one or more specific objects having a plurality of attributes and then relax at least one of the attributes to see what other objects share at least one attribute with the center object. According to another aspect, the object having the closest match to a search request can be centrally displayed with other close matches arranged by their respective metadata.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates displaying objects, comprising:

an input component that receives an input regarding a first object;

a relationship component coupled to the input component that receives metadata associated with the first object and, based on the metadata associated with the first object, searches and accesses one or more databases having metadata related to the first object, the one or more databases further having a plurality of other objects having metadata related to the first object;

a display component, coupled to the relationship component, that concurrently displays the first object with at least one or more groups of the plurality of other objects,

wherein the at least one or more groups of the plurality of other objects are displayed into clusters based on a strength of correlation of the metadata related to the at least one or more groups of the plurality of objects and the metadata related to the first object, and wherein mousing over the plurality of objects accesses and enlarges the moused over object; and

an artificial intelligence component that infers the organization of the at least one or more groups of the plurality of other objects to display.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the artificial intelligence component comprises at least one of neural networks, expert systems, Bayesian belief networks, SVMs, Hidden Markov Models, and fuzzy logic.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the artificial intelligence component is implicitly trained by observing user behavior in connection with browsing among the plurality of other objects with respect to the first object.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the input regarding the first object is based at least in part upon user-based instructions.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of other objects having metadata correlating closely with the metadata related to the first object are displayed closer to the first object.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the correlation to the first object is based at least upon user-assigned weights assigned to metadata fields.

7. A computer-implemented method that facilitates accessing objects, comprising:

receiving a first object;

receiving metadata associated with the first object;

searching and accessing, based on the metadata associated with the first object, one or more databases having metadata related to the first object, the one or more databases further having a plurality of other objects having metadata related to the first object;

displaying the first object concurrently with the plurality of other objects, wherein the plurality of other objects have metadata related to the metadata of the first object; and

organizing by inference the display of the plurality of other objects into clusters based on a strength of correlation of the metadata associated with each of the plurality of other objects and the metadata associated with the first object, wherein the metadata are assigned a user-assigned weight, and wherein mousing over the plurality of other objects access and enlarges the moused over object.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, further comprising browsing the plurality of other objects with respect to the first object, the first object being a center of focus.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, further comprising:

selecting one of the plurality of other objects wherein the selected object becomes a second object;

replacing the first object with the second object to become a new center of focus;

displaying the second object concurrently with a plurality of other objects wherein, the other objects having metadata related to the metadata of the second object.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the first object is displayed centrally on a display screen.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the plurality of other objects are displayed peripheral to the first object.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the metadata comprises at least one of intrinsic metadata and extrinsic metadata.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein displaying the first object concurrently with the plurality of other objects comprises organizing the plurality of other objects into clusters of related objects in one or more locations around the first object.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, further comprising maintaining a historical list of objects of focus.