System and methods for constructing personalized context-sensitive portal pages or views by analyzing patterns of users' information access activities

• US 7,904,439 B2
• Filed: 07/27/2005
• Issued: 03/08/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/04/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Anderson, Corin Ross, Horvitz, Eric
• Primary Examiner(s): Ali; Mohammad
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ruiz; Angelica
• Application Number:
  US11/190,690
• Publication Number:
  US 20050278323A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,050 Days
• Field of Search: 707/104.1, 707600-899, 707999001-999206, 715/745, 715/866
• US Class Current: 707/706
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/954 Navigation, e.g. using categorised browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0256 User search
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to assist users with data access activities and that includes such activities as routine web browsing and/or data access applications. A coalesced display or montage of aggregated information is provided that is focused from a plurality of sources to achieve substantially one-button access to user'"'"'s desired web or data source information/destinations in order to mitigate efforts in retrieving and viewing such information. Past web or other type data access patterns can be mined to predict future browsing sites or desired access locations. A system is provided that builds personalized web portals for associated users based on models mined from past data access patterns. The portals can provide links to web resources as well as embed content from distal (remote) pages or sites producing a montage of web or other type data content. Automated topic classification is employed to create multiple topic-centric views that can be invoked by a user.

Claims

1. A display building system embodied on a computer-readable storage medium, comprising:

a predictive component to determine potential topics of interest from interaction with one or more data locations; and

a formatting component to aggregate and display at least one of the potential topics of interest and information pertinent to the at least one potential topic of interest retrieved from at least one of the data locations based at least in part on an expected utility and a current context comprising a recent or current application usage, the expected utility is evaluated as a function, f(I(p), S(p)), where I(p) is defined as a computed interest of a page p, and S(p) is defined as a computed navigation savings derived from the aggregation and display, the formatting component approximating a value of the page p to a user as a function of I(p), and S(p), the expected utility of the page being formulated as at least one of;

f(I(p),S(p))=I(p)^k1*S(p)^k2;

f(I(p),S(p))=I(p)^k1+S(p)^k2;

or

f(I(p),S(p))=k1*I(p)+k2*S(p),

wherein k1 and k2 are constants.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one of a weighted additive utility model and a weighted multiplicative utility model.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one control to adjust at least one of the utility model and the constants.

4. The system of claim 3, the at least one control adjusts various parameters associated with the utility model and the constants, the parameters adjusted via graphical sliders that are labeled with descriptions related to an influence of adjusting the at least one control in different directions.

5. The system of claim 1, the formatting component formats the display by maximizing a total expected utility, subject to the sizes of a display and in relation to the size and amount of embedded content placed in a montage.

6. The system of claim 5, further comprising at least one of a knapsack algorithm, box fitting algorithm and a geometric analysis to fit a plurality of display clippings into the montage.

7. A display-building system embodied on computer-readable storage media, the display-building system comprising:

a predictive component that determines a plurality of potential topics of interest based on a log of interactions with a plurality of web sites and a probabilistic model providing degree of interest in information on the plurality of web sites, the predictive component employing a collaborative model constructed from logs of web site access patterns of a plurality of users to determine the plurality of potential topics of interest to a particular user, the plurality of users belonging to a group or association to which the particular user also belongs;

an information retrieval component that dynamically selects and retrieves at least a portion of content relevant to the topics of interest from two or more of the web sites, selection is based at least in part on an expected utility determined in part from the degree of interest, and a current context; and

a formatting component that aggregates and displays the retrieved portion as a singular collection of information based on a utility model, the display comprises topic-centric segmentation of information of the retrieved portion as provided by the utility model based on a navigation savings of segmented information in conjunction with the current context, the formatting component approximating a value of a web page to the particular user according to a function f, f being a function of I and S such that the value of the web page is equal to;

f(I(p), S(p)), where I(p) is defined as a computed interest I of a page p, and S(p) is defined as a computed savings S in navigation derived from the aggregation and display, the function f being one of;

a multiplicative model;

a weighted multiplicative model;

or

a weighted additive multiplicative model.

8. The display-building system of claim 7, wherein a weighted additive utility model is additionally used to approximate the value of the web page to the particular user.

9. The display-building system of claim 7, further comprising at least one control to the utility model.

10. The display-building system of claim 9, wherein the at least one control adjusts various parameters associated with the utility model, the parameters adjusted via graphical sliders that are labeled with descriptions related to an influence of adjusting the at least one control in different directions.

11. The display-building system of claim 7, wherein the formatting component formats a display by increasing expected utility, subject to a size of the display and a relation of the size and an amount of embedded content placed in a montage.

12. The display-building system of claim 11, further comprising at least one of a knapsack algorithm, box fitting algorithm and a geometric analysis to fit a plurality of display clippings into the montage.

13. A display-building system embodied on computer-readable storage media, the display-building system comprising:

a predictive component that determines a plurality of potential topics of interest based on a log of interactions with a plurality of web sites and a probabilistic model providing degree of interest in information on the plurality of web sites, the predictive component employing a collaborative model constructed from logs of web site access patterns of a plurality of users to determine the plurality of potential topics of interest to a particular user, the plurality of users belonging to a group or association to which the particular user also belongs;

an information retrieval component that dynamically selects and retrieves at least a portion of content relevant to the topics of interest from two or more of the web sites, selection is based at least in part on an expected utility determined in part from the degree of interest, and a current context;

a formatting component that aggregates and displays the retrieved portion as a singular collection of information based on a utility model, the display comprises topic-centric segmentation of information of the retrieved portion as provided by the utility model based on a navigation savings of segmented information in conjunction with the current context, the formatting component approximating a value of a web page to the particular user according to a function f, f being a function of I and S such that f(I(p), S(p)), where I(p) is defined as a computed interest I of a page p, and S(p) is defined as a computed savings S in navigation derived from the aggregation and display; and

the information retrieval component configured to calculate the expected utility of a page p as a product of a probability that the user will visit a page p given a current context C of the page p, and the value of the web page determined as a function of a computed interest I of a page p, and also as a function of a computed savings S of the page p.

14. The display-building system of claim 13, wherein a weighted additive utility model is additionally used to approximate the value of the web page to the particular user.

15. The display-building system of claim 13, further comprising at least one control to the utility model.

16. The display-building system of claim 15, wherein the at least one control adjusts various parameters associated with the utility model and the constants, the parameters adjusted via graphical sliders that are labeled with descriptions related to an influence of adjusting the at least one control in different directions.

17. The display-building system of claim 13, wherein the formatting component formats a display by increasing expected utility, subject to the sizes of the display and in relation to the size and amount of embedded content placed in a montage.

18. The display-building system of claim 17, further comprising at least one of a knapsack algorithm, box fitting algorithm and a geometric analysis to fit a plurality of display clippings into the montage.