Patent Application
20050027800
This invention relates to a graphical user interface for an online collaboration environment.
It often happens that a user finally manages to connect to an online meeting, but shows up after a significant amount of work has already been completed. The user needs to learn what's already been done; the current agenda item; and what's still to come.
Many technical solutions have been developed which address one or more of these questions.
NNTP or network news (see Ed Krol, The Whole Internet Catalog. O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. Sebastopol, Calif. 1992 for details) provides a venue in which users can asynchronously post messages and responses into administered news groups (i.e., predefined groups of messages which are meant to relate to specified topic, e.g., all articles in alt.sport.soccer should deal with soccer). Only loosely structured fomms of interaction are provided, e.g., query-and-respond. No other styles of interaction are supported. In particular, there is no way for users to define or participate in a particular style of interaction in which there is a predefined, interrelated sequence of phases, all newsgroups being independent from one another.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) (see Ed Krol, The Whole Internet Catalog. O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. Sebastopol, Calif. 1992 for details) is similar to NNTP in that it allows users to post messages and responses to each other in predefined topic areas—called channels in IRC. The main difference with IRC is that the interactions are synchronous rather than asynchronous as in NNTP. Just as with NNTP, IRC does not enable users to define or participate in a particular style of interaction in which there is a predefined, interrelated sequence of phases, all channels being independent from one another.
Loom, a visualization tool for Usenet (NNTP) news groups, (for details, see Judith Donath et al. “Visualizing Conversation” published in the Journal of Computer Mediated Conversation. Volume 4, number 4, June 1999) provides a technique for displaying the emotional mood (e.g., hostile, happy) of an NNTP-based online community (e.g., a Usenet newsgroup) by analyzing the content of its interactions. Although this utility can analyze online interactions and provide a graphical representation of aspects of the interactions, it does not provide users with a sequenced, multiphase style of interaction, or an associated graphical user interface.
Babble (for details, see Thomas Erickson, et al. “Socially Translucent Systems: Social Proxies, Persistent Conversation, and the Design of ‘Babble.’” published in Human Factors in Computing Systems: The Proceedings of CHI '99. ACM Press, 1999.) provides dynamic indicators of the presence and activity of all operational users with respect to the available topics (i.e., discussion areas created by the users). These indicators are computed using the activities of the participants (e.g., connections, postings and topic switches). Although lightly structured styles of interaction are frequently adopted (e.g., interaction in the “—Commons Area—” is informal conversation, while interaction in the “Babble Problems” topic consists of serious question/answer dialogs), no way is provided to define a sequenced, multiphase style of interaction.
Online games, like chess and bridge (e.g., Chessmaster 6000 by Mindscape, Inc.) provide structured and enforced styles of interaction, but not ones that (1) can be defined by the users, the rules all being predefined; (2) that can have the rules changed by the users during a game (e.g., “A queen can leap from anywhere to anywhere”).
Coordinator and its patented method of structuring human communications (for details see: Flores et al. “Method and Apparatus for Structuring and Managing Human Communications By Explicitly Defining the Types of Communications Permitted Between Participants.” U.S. Pat. No. 5,208,748 May 4, 1993.) provides an electronic mail-based system that allows users to structure conversations and track tasks.
For example, a typical interaction begins with a “Request” message from person A to person B, requesting something from person B by a certain date. This e-mail note asks Person B to respond with a “Promise” message (promising to perform the action), with a “Decline” message (declining to perform the action), or with a “Counteroffer” message (offering to perform the action by a different date or to perform a different action). If B promises to do the action, then a typical conversation might continue with B eventually sending a “Report completion” message (indicating that the action has been performed) and A replying with a “Close” message (indicating that the action was performed satisfactorily).
The Oval implementation of Coordinator extends the base functionality by allowing end-users to modify interaction rules mid interaction (for details, see Malone et al. “Experiments with Oval: A Radically Tailorable Tool for Cooperative Work” via URL http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/CCSWP 181/index.html#4b).
Thus Coordinator, implemented with Oval allows users to define and maintain structured styles of online interaction. Users are still unable to handle interactions where messages are posted to a group of recipients, all of whom are not known a priori (e.g., as is the case in an brainstorming session where the participants include any and all contributing online users). Coordinator/Oval also does not provide a dynamic, graphical representation giving users with an overview and interface to a given meeting. In addition, no method or interface is provided allowing users to replay all or a section of a given meeting.
Work Flows allow users to specify sequences of steps, e.g., the steps required to fill out, submit and process a travel expense report, but do not provide users with a dynamic graphic representation of a multiphase online meeting, one providing users with an overview of all of the separate agenda item interactions (including indications of activity: who, what and how active).
Thus, there remains a need for a system and method providing online users with a dynamic graphic representation of the overview an agenda-driven, multiphase online meeting, one enabling users to replay previous activity.
Sametime Meeting, a product of IBM/Lotus allows users to create and interact with an instance of an online meeting, this interaction including the display of text, multimedia and compound documents, the environment providing indication of users' active connection to a given instance. Sametime Meeting does not, however, allow users to participate asynchronously, not does it provide a visualization of the active users that indicates their level activity relative to a given agenda item.
The invention relates to a system for structuring an “agenda-driven meeting” (ADM) that allows a distributed work group, committee, or task force to have an online meeting to review the status of various ongoing projects.
A feature of the invention is an “agenda”, consisting of a list of items (e.g., goals) that defines a meeting phase, represented by a phase-shape, within which the given item is discussed.
An optional feature of the invention is that the meeting may be non-synchronous.
Another feature of the invention is that making user actions visible and public supports social awareness, which allows the group to enforce (or not) the interactional coherence of the group via social mechanisms such as peer pressure, imitation and etiquette.
Another feature of the invention is a user interface consisting of two interrelated parts: A phased social proxy representation that explicitly depicts the presence and activities of the participants in each phase of the conversation; and a multipaned phased representation of the conversation that depicts the conversation itself and the products of each of its phases.
Yet another feature of the invention is that four sorts of objects can be created in each phase:
Yet another feature of the invention is that:
All objects, including phases, can have various states:
The foregoing and other objects, aspects, and advantages will be better understood from the following non limiting detailed description of preferred embodiments of the invention with reference to the drawings that include the following:
A detailed example of the preferred embodiment, is given, describing how the current invention is used in the process of supporting a design meeting. An example of this is depicted in
The phased social proxy 1010 representing the meeting is a public representation—that is, all participants see the same representation, and all know that the others see the same representation.
The phased social proxy 1010 represents a given meeting by a series of simple phase-shapes 1050-1090 connected by lines 1100-1130,—each phase-shape corresponding to a particular phase of the meeting. By convention, the leftmost phase-shape 1050 is the first phase of the meeting, with the phase-shapes to the right 1060-1090 representing later phases respectively. One will appreciate that the line segments 1100-1130 could include arrow heads to indicate this sequencing explicitly. The phase-shape 1060 that depicts the “current” phase in which the group is involved expands to dominate the social proxy 1010; the other phase-shapes 1050 and 1070-1090, remain visible, but smaller. When the group progresses to the next phase (i.e., phase 3), this new phase becomes the “current” phase, its phase-shape (1070) expands, and the previous, completed phase-shape 1060 shrinks and becomes shaded. By differentiating the phase-shape of the current phase, participants are given a clear indication of the primary topic of interest. One will appreciate that other methods could be employed to distinguish the phase-shape of the current phase, including, but not limited to having it appear in a unique color or shape. One will also appreciate that the phased social proxy can be dynamically positioned so that the phase-shape representing the current phase is located centrally in the center of the 1010 space.
The meeting participants are represented as small dots 1135-1160, and are positioned in the phases of social proxy 1010 according to which phase they are currently involved in. Normally, most or all participants will be in the “current” conversation phase 1060; however, nothing prevents a given user from moving to a different phase, depicted by dot 1135 in phase-shape 1050.
When participants are active in the conversation (activity meaning that they ‘speak’ (e.g., contribute a comment), use a tool, or simply ‘listen’ (scroll the conversation phase-pane)), their dot (one of 1135-1160) moves into the center of the appropriate phase-space (one of 1050-1090); as they are idle, their dot drifts to the phase-space's periphery. This graphical depiction of the level of activity is just like that used in Babble (for details, see Thomas Erickson, et al. “Socially Translucent Systems: Social Proxies, Persistent Conversation, and the Design of ‘Babble.’” published in Human Factors in Computing Systems: The Proceedings of CHI '99. ACM Press, 1999).
Note that since the phased social proxy 1010 is public and, hence, seen equally by all participants, if a given user does move to a phase other than the current one, their movement will be visible to the entire group. This explicit indication provides a powerful “social affordance,” one that can press users to restrict their activities to the current phase so that their actions conform to that of the group. Alternatively, suppose a user does turn their attention to a previous phase, causing their dot 1135 to move to a noncurrent phase-shape 1050. Other participants seeing this might being to wonder why someone is still looking at this phase. Perhaps there remains resolved issues related to this phase. Perhaps the participant represented by dot 1135 came to the meeting late, and is reviewing the previous phase to catch up to the other participants.
The phased social proxy 1010 also includes representations of tools, shown here as small squares 1280 and 1290. Each of these shapes 1280, 1290 launches a different application that can aid users in the completion of the current phase. Such applications can include, but are not limited to, a timer, with which users can measure how long a given discussion takes; a voting application, with which users can make a final decision by casting votes for or against a given proposal or conclusion, or a random number generator, the products of which users can employ to make decisions (e.g., who will write up the summary of the given phase).
The current invention also includes a multipaned representation of the content of the meeting 1015, consisting of three panes:
The contents of the both the goals 1020 and product 1040 panes remain the same regardless of which phase-shape a given user has selected.
Note that since all of the data in the current invention is maintained persistently, it can be viewed or heard by those who are not present.
A final feature of the conversation representation is that participants may attach annotations (similar to ‘sticky notes’) to a noncurrent conversation phase. These allow participants to add information, even though the primary content of a phase is frozen, or may not yet be created. These presence of such annotations is indicated by the thickening of relevant phase-shape's line width. Note the difference in the width of 1050 versus 1060-1090. One will appreciate that other graphic representations of the presence of such annotations exist including, but not limited to changing the color or line type of the relevant phase-shape.
The two components of the present invention 1010 and 1015, acting separately and in tandem, support the formation of group awareness, i.e., allow participants to know what others are doing, as well as supporting awareness of others' awareness. This group awareness is essential to the present invention in that it aims to support coherent group interaction (e.g., everyone attending to the same conversational phase) without rigidly mandating it. The following are the key aspects of social awareness that are supported:
Another benefit of the present invention is that both the phased conversation representation 1015 and the phased social proxy 1010, by adding structure and richness to the conversation, permit it to be archived in novel forms. One such form is that of a persistent archive of the conversation with its contents organized according to conversation phases.
Because the activity of conversations participants is archived, the conversation can be replayed. Participants, or others interested in the conversation, can replay it at high speed to get a sense of the number of participants in each phase, the degree of coherence, and so on. To replay a previous completed phase, a player can select the corresponding phase-shape (e.g., 1050). As already described, this will result in the associated conversation being displayed in the conversation pane 1030. In the preferred embodiment, the conversation pane 1030 includes a scroll bar 1225, which can be used to scroll the presented conversation back and forth. Note that the data displayed in the Phased Social Proxy 1010, will track that displayed in all panes of the phased conversation representation 1015. Thus, the objects 1270 and 1275 displayed in products pane 1040, will only appear at the point in the meeting that they were created. Similarly, if object 1270 is deleted at some point in the meeting, its representation will vanish when this point is reached during replay.
One will appreciate that an archived, completed phase of a given meeting can be replayed by a given user either during a later phase of the meeting, or after the entire meeting has been finished. One will also appreciate that the current invention also covers other methods of replaying the conversation, including but not limited to providing users with a VCR-like set of controls (i.e., rewind: ““<<”; play: “>”; fast forward: “>>”; and stop: c).
One will also appreciate that since a given meeting is provided by a persistent online service (as will be described in detail with reference to
One with regular skill in the art will appreciate that during the use of an “instance” of the current invention, i.e., during a meeting held according to an embodiment of the invention, the configuration of the given instance could be modified (e.g., by a user with sufficient rights, say the meeting manager). These modifications might include, but are not limited to the addition or deletion of one or more phases, as well as the reordering of one or more phases.
One with regular skill in the art will also appreciate that a given phase's state (e.g., completed) can be set either by a single user (e.g., one with sufficient rights or in a particular role, like the moderator of the particular phase); or by a set of users, including, but not limited to a vote by all users currently active in the given phase.
The current invention also provides three extensions to the graphical user interface and multiphase online collaboration method (discussed in detail with reference to
Phased social proxy 2000 also contains 3 new types of icons: arrows 2080-2100; squares 2070, 2120 and 2130; and triangles, 2110-2115.
In addition a user can mark an object (including a room) with Glitter (relative to a user). “Glitter” is a state that can be applied to an object by a user to attract the attention of another user; it may have an optional note attached to it.
One will also appreciate that participants can take on one of several roles, each of which has permissions associated with it:
Modes of Use: As noted above, this is intended to allow groups to have online, not-necessarily synchronous status meetings. At one extreme one could imagine that only the meeting's chairs actually enter the online space, conducting the entire meeting by sending out pointed queries, and using the responses to generate Glosses and To Dos. At the other extreme, we could imagine a fully synchronous meeting, in which either everyone moves synchronously from item to item, or in which participants spread out over the agenda, gravitating to the most relevant topics, and filling in their statuses. In this situation, pointed queries could be used to attract the attention of a particular participant when their input is required.
The other new aspect of the phase social proxy 3000 is that in addition to connectors 3120-3160 between the phase-shapes 3010-3160, like those 1100-1130 in 1000, one of 3000's phase shapes 3030 has two connectors coming from it, 3140 and 3150. This is a graphical representation of how the choice made in the phase corresponding to phase-shape 3030 determines which phase is executed next, that corresponding to 3040, or 3050. This ability to represent conditional branching enables users to employ the current invention to conduct online meeting based on a given business procedure, like a workflow. Workflows can include but are not limited to, purchasing or travel expense accounting. Thus, 3000 might be an overview of the execution of an travel expense account, with phase-step 3010 being where the employee enters their expenses; 3020 where the employee and their boss discuss a particular expense item; 3030 where the boss and the account department determine which project will pay for the given trip; 3040 and 3050 corresponding to the two possible projects from which the fund are transferred; and 3060 being where the overall transaction summary reports are created and sent to the related parties.
The current invention also anticipates how a phase social proxy could be automatically generated from a existing workflow specification.
In addition to providing a dynamically updated representation of the current state of the online meeting and the activity of its users, the current invention also provides access to a graphical user interface to previously executed passes through the loop. Each of 4170, 4180 and 4190 (each a phase-shape-loop) represent passes through the loop, 4190—the bottom-right-most one representing the most recent. If a user wants to see the loop's phase-shapes—including glosses, pointed queries and To Do's—as they looked during previous passes through the loop, they can select the corresponding phase-shape-loop, For example, 4000 could represent the online discourse regarding the iterative design of a prototype, the phase-shapes representing the following topics:
If a given user wanted to see the previous pass through the design-implement-test loop, they could select the 4180 phase-shape-loop. This would bring 4180 to the foreground, showing 4020-4040 as they looked at the beginning of this loop's execution. By scrolling through the loop's execution, e.g., using the 1225 scroll bar, this activity that took place during this loop's execution can be reviewed.
One with regular skill in the art will appreciate that graphical representations of additional meeting-related products are also anticipated by the current invention. These include, but are not limited to arrow-shaped boxes positioned adjacent to a phased social proxy, which represents agenda items proposed for a subsequent meeting.
The preferred implementation of the current invention is as a web-based (HTTP-based) network application, as will be described in detail with reference to
The server 5010 can be any computing node able to act as an HTTP server. This includes, but is not limited to, the products sold by IBM under the trademarks ThinkPad or PowerPC, running the operating system and server application suite sold by Microsoft under the trademark Windows NT.
Examples of the network 5000 include, but are not limited to, the Internet and private intranets.
The each client 5020-5040 can include any network node able to act as an HTTP client.
Examples include, but are not limited to, an IBM ThinkPad running Windows 95 and a web browser such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, or Apple's Power Macintosh running MacOS 8.5.6 and a web browser such as Netscape's Navigator. Clients also include network-connectable mobile (i.e. portable) devices such as that sold under the trademark WorkPad by IBM, as well as smart cellular telephones (i.e., devices which can act as a cellular telephone as well as run network applications, like web browsers), like that sold under the trademark Nokia 9000i by Nokia.
In the preferred implementation, the client application is an applet retrieved from the server 5010, and run via the client's HTTP client (web browser). Also, in the preferred implementation, this applet, in addition to handling data display and user interactions (e.g., data entry and mouse events), also constantly polls the server 5010 for updated data, this data being the latest version available for the meeting instance currently being viewed. Those with regular skill in the art will appreciate that there are other methods of retrieving such data, including, but not limited to having the server push updates, whenever available down to the client, the client listening on a port known to the server (for details, see Douglas Corner, Internetworking with TCP/IP, Vol. 1 Principles, Protocols and Architecture. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1991.).
The Agenda-Driven Meeting database 6070 can be any application providing access and persistent management of data, such as that sold by IBM under the trademark DB/2. Those with regular skill in the art will also appreciate that the Agenda-Driven Meeting database 6070 could be run on another remote network connected node and accessed via the network 5000.
The Agenda-Driven Meeting Handler 6060 shown in
For each request that arrives, the Agenda-Driven Meeting Handler 6060 determines its type and applicable agenda-driven meeting instance, processes the given event, updates the given meeting's data in the database 6070, updates the graphical representation for the given meeting instance—also stored in the database 6070; and then sends the updated graphical representation out to all active users of the given meeting instance.
The Agenda-Driven Meeting Handler processes different requests slightly differently:
The present invention also provides a method by which a third party service organization can make the agenda-driven meeting facility available for use by members of a customer organization. This process is depicted in
Another benefit of the present invention is that both the Phase Conversation Representation and the Phased Social Proxy, by adding structure and richness to the conversation, permit it to be archived in novel forms:
Variations described for the present invention can be realized in any combination desirable for each particular application. Thus particular limitations, and/or embodiment enhancements described herein, which may have particular advantages to a particular application need not be used for all applications. Also, not all limitations need be implemented in methods, systems and/or apparatus including one or more concepts of the present invention.
The present invention can be realized in hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software. A visualization tool according to the present invention can be realized in a centralized fashion in one computer system, or in a distributed fashion where different elements are spread across several interconnected computer systems. Any kind of computer system—or other apparatus adapted for carrying out the methods and/or functions described herein—is suitable. A typical combination of hardware and software could be a general purpose computer system with a computer program that, when being loaded and executed, controls the computer system such that it carries out the methods described herein. The present invention can also be embedded in a computer program product, which comprises all the features enabling the implementation of the methods described herein, and which—when loaded in a computer system—is able to carry out these methods.
Computer program means or computer program in the present context include any expression, in any language, code or notation, of a set of instructions intended to cause a system having an information processing capability to perform a particular function either directly or after conversion to another language, code or notation, and/or reproduction in a different material form.
Thus the invention includes an article of manufacture which comprises a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied therein for causing a function described above. The computer readable program code means in the article of manufacture comprises computer readable program code means for causing a computer to effect the steps of a method of this invention. Similarly, the present invention may be implemented as a computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied therein for causing a a function described above. The computer readable program code means in the computer program product comprising computer readable program code means for causing a computer to effect one or more functions of this invention. Furthermore, the present invention may be implemented as a program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for causing one or more functions of this invention.
It is noted that the foregoing has outlined some of the more pertinent objects and embodiments of the present invention. This invention may be used for many applications. Thus, although the description is made for particular arrangements and methods, the intent and concept of the invention is suitable and applicable to other arrangements and applications. It will be clear to those skilled in the art that modifications to the disclosed embodiments can be effected without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. The described embodiments ought to be construed to be merely illustrative of some of the more prominent features and applications of the invention. Other beneficial results can be realized by applying the disclosed invention in a different manner or modifying the invention in ways known to those familiar with the art.
Having described embodiments for peer-to-peer interaction and more particularly to a method for flexibly relating information, it is noted that modifications and variations can be made by persons skilled in the art in light of the above teachings. It is therefore to be understood that changes may be made in the particular embodiments of the invention disclosed which are within the scope and spirit of the invention as defined by the appended claims. Having thus described the invention with the details and particularity required by the patent laws, what is claimed and desired protected by Letters Patent is set forth in the appended claims.
