Patent Application
20080082613
Reference will now be made in detail to specific embodiments of the invention including the best modes contemplated by the inventors for carrying out the invention. Examples of these specific embodiments are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. While the invention is described in conjunction with these specific embodiments, it will be understood that it is not intended to limit the invention to the described embodiments. On the contrary, it is intended to cover alternatives, modifications, and equivalents as may be included within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims. In the following description, specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. The present invention may be practiced without some or all of these specific details. In addition, well known features may not have been described in detail to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the invention.
Embodiments of the present invention combine online presence with representations of the emotional or physical state of the user to enable a powerful new way to facilitate communication among a community of users in a network. These emotional or physical states, referred to herein collectively as “moods,” may include virtually any such state which can be experienced by a human. For example, common emotional states which may be represented in various implementations of the invention include happiness, contentment, excitement, indifference, anger, sadness, frustration, etc. In addition, common physical states which may be represented include, for example, hunger, fatigue, illness, etc. According to specific embodiments of the present invention, mood and presence are conflated in a single visual indicator referred to herein as an “online presence indicator” or “OPI” which is used to simultaneously represent both the user's online status and mood to other users in a network.
According to some embodiments, presence and mood are represented using variations of a “smiley face,” also referred to herein as “emoticons,” having different facial expressions as illustrated in
According to various specific embodiments, the OPI and the associated mood may be selected in a variety of ways. For example, in the Yahoo! Messenger interface, the status control menu (e.g., menu 106 of
According to an embodiment in which the OPI status controls reside at the top level of the interface (see U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/394,034 filed on Mar. 29, 2006 (Attorney Docket No. YAH1P005), incorporated herein by reference in its entirety), different mood options for a given online status could be presented when, for example, the user moves the cursor over one or more of the top level controls. It will be understood that the controls and menus with which online status and mood can be selected may vary considerably without departing from the scope of the present invention.
Once an OPI with an associated mood is selected, both the online status and the mood of the user are communicated to other users in the network. That is, the user's online status and mood may be represented by the selected OPI in any application or site on the network in which an OPI is employed. For example, as shown in
Embodiments of the invention are to be contrasted with previous techniques which communicate mood in that none of these techniques are also able to indicate a user's online status, e.g., online vs. offline, in an integrated way. Similarly, none of the previous mechanisms for indicating online status are also able to represent a user's mood. Even the use of Yahoo! avatars in place of the conventional OPI, e.g., in Yahoo! Messenger, does not perform this function in that the avatar remains unchanged regardless of the user's online status.
According to some embodiments, a standardized and simple representation of the OPI is provided which makes it easy to determine both online status and mood with only a cursory visual inspection. For example, according to one embodiment, only yellow and grey emoticons are used in an effort to make it very clear, regardless of the mood being expressed, whether the corresponding user is online (yellow) or offline (grey). In addition, given the nature of the emoticons employed in such embodiments, mood is readily discernible even in small, low resolution images.
According to an even more specific embodiment, mood is only represented when the user is online. If the user is offline, no mood is indicated, e.g., as illustrated by the grey sleepy face. This reduces any confusion which may result from communicating a mood while a user is offline. However, embodiments are contemplated where mood may be integrated with the offline OPI representation.
According to some embodiments, the simpler and more standardized OPI is facilitated, at least in part, by an intentional segregation of online presence and online identity. This segregation enables standardization in that it removes other aspects of personalization which could otherwise make the OPI more complex. However, it should be noted that more complex embodiments are contemplated in which additional characteristics may be integrated with the OPI. For example, gender could be readily incorporated into the OPI of the present invention, e.g., with hairstyles. Additionally, emoticons may incorporate different colors to indicate a wide variety of characteristics (e.g., political affiliation, personality type, ethnicity, etc.). Thus, while it may be desirable in some implementations to keep the number of online states small (i.e., by limiting the number of characteristics represented in the OPI), the present invention contemplates more complicated schemes. As will be understood, various additional characteristics which may be represented in an OPI, and the various ways in which they may be represented will be apparent to those of skill in the art and are therefore within the scope of the invention.
According to a specific embodiment, users are enabled to generate their own text to go with existing moods. For example, by selecting the “New Status Message” option in the status control menu of the Yahoo! Messenger interface (e.g., menu 106 of
According to some embodiments, users may also be enabled to create representations of new moods by, for example, manipulating a set of primitives within the standardized context of the OPI. For example, a user may be presented with a palette of facial characteristics from which a facial expression may be constructed on the standard yellow circle on which emoticons are based.
It should be noted that integrating presence and mood in an OPI may be particularly beneficial in mobile applications for which it is highly desirable to minimize the amount of information transmitted to and/or stored on mobile devices. By combining presence and mood, the mood of a user may be communicated to others in the network with very little additional information, particularly where the representations of mood are standardized and relatively easy to represent (e.g., emoticons). For example, a relatively small number of emoticons representing different moods or emotional states may be stored on a mobile device such that the information received from the network need only encode the appropriate emoticon with a small number of bits. This may again be contrasted with the use of avatars, particularly those with animation, which, due to the amount of data required to encode them, would consume an undesirable amount of network or device processing bandwidth in the mobile context.
The conflation of presence and mood enabled by the present invention lends itself to a wide variety of applications. As shown above in
According to another set of embodiments, a user's experience in a network or online context may be influenced by his current mood. That is, for example, the operation of an application or service with which the user is interacting may be influenced in response to the user's mood as communicated in the network by an OPI implemented according to the invention. For example, the musical selections of a streaming music service, e.g., Yahoo!'s LAUNCHcast radio, can be influenced by the user's current mood, e.g., if the user's mood is “angry,” musical selections might tend toward more soothing fare. In addition, the content presented to the user, e.g., online advertisements, in any of a variety of contexts might change according to the user's mood.
Other exemplary embodiments employ the user's mood to change the theme, background colors (e.g., using CSS), etc., for any content or interface. Appropriate environments for particular applications or services (e.g., Yahoo! Messenger) could be preloaded based on mood. The stationery in an email interface could be changed in response to mood. Blogs written during a particular mood could be tagged with the user's mood. Chatrooms where users of a particular mood are chatting could be bubbled up and presented to users having similar or complementary moods. More generally, a user's mood can be used to influence the user's experience when interacting with a device or network in virtually any way and remain within the scope of the invention.
In other embodiments, moods are aggregated over groups of users for a variety of purposes. In one such embodiment, moods are “averaged” over a user group, e.g., Yahoo! users or some subset of Yahoo! users such as the members of a particular Yahoo! Group. For example, each mood could be assigned a value along a linear continuum or in a “mood vector space,” and the value or vectors could be combined in some way to yield an overall mood for the group. In a more specific embodiment, a user is able to specifically identify the group for which a measure of the aggregate mood is desirable, e.g., friends, family, etc. The user could then track the aggregate mood for his own purposes.
The mood of a specific user or group of users may also be tracked over time to develop a mood profile, or to augment user or group profile data already being collected. Thus, a user's reported moods or mood fluctuations could become part of the user's profile which may be used for any of the purposes for which user profiles are generated.
According to yet another set of embodiments, a variety of techniques are provided for communicating changes to a user's mood, online presence, or other changes or events relating to the user to others in the network. According to one such technique, the OPI “pulses” in a first user's interface to indicate something new or an event has occurred relating to a second user corresponding to that OPI. That is, the visual representation of the OPI alternately fades out and becomes more visible over time to indicate the event or change. It will be understood that this example of “pulsing” is not restrictive, and that a variety of dynamic animations of the OPI may be used to indicate such a change or event.
In addition, the change or event which triggers such an indication may vary considerably according to the invention. For example, this feature could indicate that the user corresponding to the OPI sent or would like to send something to the notified user such as, for example, a message, a voice mail, an add request, a file transfer, etc. Alternatively, the notification could represent a change in mood or online presence for the user corresponding to the OPI.
According to one approach, the user to whom the event or change is communicated may have elected to have events or changes relating to the other user communicated in this way. Alternatively, the user to whom the OPI corresponds may have made the election. According to another similar embodiment, such changes and events relating to one user may be used to trigger alternative communications or notifications to another user regarding the change or event, e.g., email, instant message, voice mail, etc.
According to a particular implementation, a more interactive embodiment is contemplated. According to this implementation, the user to whom the online presence and mood of another user is communicated may take steps to attempt to alter the mood of the other user by effectively sending or suggesting a mood change. According to one embodiment, this feature may be implemented as an extension to the conventional use of an emoticon in an email or instant message. That is, it is common for users to include emoticons in a message for the purpose of cheering up or commiserating with another user. To extend this notion, the present invention makes it possible to include an emoticon in such a message which, when selected by the recipient, may be used to replace the current mood indicated by the recipient's OPI. So, for example, a user can propose a positive mood change to a sad or angry user in an instant message, which can then be accepted by the recipient, resulting in a corresponding change to the OPI.
It should be noted that the present invention may be implemented on any computing platform and in any network topology in which communicating online presence is a useful functionality. For example and as illustrated in
While the invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to specific embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that changes in the form and details of the disclosed embodiments may be made without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. For example, embodiments of the invention have been described herein with reference to particular graphical representations of emoticons. However, it will be understood that these representations are merely exemplary, and that any visual representation which can simultaneously communicate online status and mood is within the scope of the invention. For example, emoticons constructed from ASCII characters (i.e., the original emoticons) may be employed.
Alternatively, mood may be represented in an OPI without using a representation of a facial expression. For example, color may be used as a proxy for mood. Other variations will be apparent to those of skill in the art and are within the scope of the invention.
In addition, although various advantages, aspects, and objects of the present invention have been discussed herein with reference to various embodiments, it will be understood that the scope of the invention should not be limited by reference to such advantages, aspects, and objects. Rather, the scope of the invention should be determined with reference to the appended claims.
