Patent Application
20080178081
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material, which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
The present invention is directed to computer networks, and more particularly to a system and method for guiding non-technical people in using web services.
The term “Web 2.0” refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Internet-based services such as social networking sites. The term coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004 has given a name to a recent phenomenon wherein next generation “Web2.0” sites began to flourish. In the new era of Web2.0, the existing mega-sites slowly dissipate and their combined content is being broken down and regrown within a multitude of new niche websites. The Web2.0 scene is simply bursting with new initiatives and still new ones keep emerging each and every day.
Within this new reality, a person can indulge in his niche hobbies with a thriving online society from around the world, sharing the same interests. As every user has his own usage habits, today's website user interface (UI) will quite frequently require more than a few mouse clicks to allow a person to accomplish his own personalized web site browsing. Hence, to accommodate all his interests online, a person will need to specialize in using a plethora of websites, each with its own distinct user interface, quirks and frequent changes.
The Web2.0 era websites strive to offer their users a personalized experience. To accomplish personalization and to offer security and privacy, the vast majority of Web2.0 web sites require the creation of personal accounts, confirming the registration and login to the service before starting to use it—a process the user will need to repeat, manually, for every website he wishes to use. The user will also need to manually keep track of his registration details for each website and update them all manually if a change in his personal details is required.
In today's websites, it is easy for a friend to direct you to a web page with content he believes you'll find interesting. It is unfortunately quite a different task to direct a friend to perform an action in one of those websites. The websites seldom introduces a single link that when clicked will make you vote for the best photo, ask a website moderator to remove an offending article or post a positive comment on an interesting essay. If he wants you to participate, your friend will probably need to provide you with textual step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish such tasks.
Web2.0 websites tend to borrow ideas from each other's UI and features. While this makes it quite straightforward for a tech-savvy user to dive into new Web2.0 sites, the growing multitude of know-how prerequisites often makes it quite intimidating for the less technical users to join websites that otherwise would have offered them a wealth of information and a place to express themselves.
We provide a method and system for guiding users, such as non-technical people, in using web services. Methodologies and/or techniques are included to simplify the use of commonly required website operations; automatically bypassing website complications; automating the manual and repetitive nature of personal details input across websites; and self management of all personal user details at a single location.
The invention helps simplify operations such as registration to web site services, logging in with the registration details and using all site specific features, such as commenting on a news item, voting in a poll and rating articles.
The method and system for guiding a user to operate simplified computing operations for common web services activities via a web service interface standard to the web service itself include recognizing a user's activity with the web service. The method and system includes providing a first interface to the user for performing an operation relating to the web service, where the first interface is different from the web service interface associated with the web service and the first interface includes a plurality of graphical elements. In the method and system, upon receiving the user input commands via the first interface, the user input commands are translated into a format usable by the web service and provided to the web service, bypassing existing web service input commands provided by the web service interface. The web service performs an operation based on the translated input commands and generates an output, which is provided back to the first interface. The output commands are then translated for display on the first interface.
One type of simplification includes the introduction of new user interface and graphical elements, side-by-side with the existing website interface, or external to the existing interface. Such elements may include a graphical overlay that marks actions the user needs to take for a required operation to be activated (clicking a button, following a link, clicking a graphical element, moving a slider, etc.) by darkening the screen except for the location of the action UI, highlighting the action UI itself and/or overlaying a graphical pointer that points to the action UI.
Another example of such elements may include new alternative UI elements (buttons, links, forms, etc.) placed at a more graphically visible location, that when activated perform the required actions instead of the available UI elements. This may include, for example, a new, large button at the top of the page that when clicked will perform the same operation as clicking a small link at the bottom of the original website page.
Another such element is a graphical wizard with rich documentation (e.g. text, photos, videos) to guide the user step-by-step through the required actions or alternatively, textual, audio or video instructions to guide the user step-by-step through the required actions.
The invention includes methods to automatically bypass common website complications by, for example, the complication of choosing a user name that is unique in this web service, coming up with a strong yet memorable password and automatically confirming registration requests by receiving the confirmation email and following the confirmation link within.
A method is provided to automate manual repetitive tasks required across websites, such as retyping personal details including a name, date of birth, home address, etc. Example of automation and simplification includes showing an alternative, common graphical interface to ask the user for personal details, keeping store of the personal details and using it automatically in future web sites when reuse of such data is possible. Another method of automation includes the automatic deduction of user information when possible, for example, deducing a geographical address from the user's Internet IP address information. A system is also provided to allow the user to manage his personal details at a single location.
Another method is provided to simplify complex operations within or across websites by chaining common actions into a single new action. The new action could perform multiple actions on a single web site, for example register the user to a web site, log in to it, browse to a poll page within the web site and vote in the poll. The new action could perform multiple actions on multiple web sites, such as posting the same comment in several blogs when the blogs cover the same issue to which the comment is relevant. The new action could also perform related actions on multiple web sites, such as uploading the currently viewed photo on Flickr to my MySpace account and adding a blog item in Blogger about the new photo.
The invention includes a Web Assistant Manager that is responsible for the knowledge of what web site is supported and that combines the data from an Automation Repository, a Context UI Repository, and a Personal Data Manager to provide computerized instructions for creating a new, better personalized, simpler and more usable web site interface.
The alternative web site interface is offered to the user through a Display Proxy that applies the above instructions on the existing web site interface to create a new, simpler usage experience.
The system may be provided via a server-side computer-implemented method that does not require the user to install additional applications, or alternatively, a client-side computer-implemented method that requires the user to install an additional application(s).
The invention includes a mechanism for gathering common statistics on the system users' behavior while supplying them to the system administrator in a concise way.
Other business models and technical aspects would become apparent to those skilled in the relevant art(s) in view of the teachings of the present disclosure. Additional aspects of the present invention would be apparent in view of the description that follows.
The foregoing and other aspects of the invention will become more apparent from the following description of illustrative embodiments thereof and the accompanying drawings, which illustrate, by way of example, the principles of the invention. In the drawings:
a illustrates the system in a server-side deployment configuration;
b illustrates the system in a client-side deployment configuration;
a-f illustrate a usage example of the assistant service; and
The present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings, which are provided as illustrative examples of the invention so as to enable those skilled in the relevant art(s) to practice the invention. Notably, the figures and examples below are not meant to limit the scope of the present invention to a single embodiment, but other embodiments are possible by way of interchange of some or all of the described or illustrated elements. Moreover, where certain elements of the present invention can be partially or fully implemented using known components, only those portions of such known components that are necessary for an understanding of the present invention will be described, and detailed descriptions of other portions of such known components will be omitted so as not to obscure the invention. In the present specification, an embodiment showing a singular component should not necessarily be limited to other embodiments including a plurality of the same component, and vice-versa, unless explicitly stated otherwise herein. Moreover, applicants do not intend for any term in the specification or claims to be ascribed an uncommon or special meaning unless explicitly set forth as such. Further, the present invention encompasses present and future known equivalents to the known components referred to herein by way of illustration.
a and 1b illustrates a system 100 for guiding users, non-technical people, in using web services.
a and 1b illustrate a plurality of Users 108a-108n that use the system, a plurality of Web Sites 110a-110n that are supported by the system such that the Users can be assisted through using the services on these web sites. The systems in
In
As explained in greater detail below, the Web Assistant Manager 116 guides the Users through their web browsing experience by, for example, using the Display Proxy Engine 102 to alter and simplify the user interface of existing web sites. For example, Users 108a-108n may browse a supported website that requires an initial registration. The system will detect the supported web site and the required registration and will supply an immediate alternative interface for the registration action. The new registration interface will take into consideration values from historically used registration forms such as a preferred username, password and email, and will require the user to acknowledge the registration by no more than a single click of an approval button.
A Web Assistant Manager 116 can be implemented via one or more servers, with each server being one or more computers providing various shared resources with each other and to other system components. The shared resources include files for programs, web pages, databases and libraries; output devices, such as, printers, plotters, display monitors and facsimile machines; communications devices, such as modems and Internet access facilities; and other peripherals such as scanners, or the like. The communications devices can support wired or wireless communications, including satellite, terrestrial (fiber optic, copper, coaxial, and the like), radio, microwave, free-space optics, and/or any other form or method of transmission.
The server hosting a Web Assistant Manager 116 can be configured to support the standard Internet Protocol (IP) developed to govern communications over public and private Internet backbones. The protocol is defined in Internet Standard (STD) 5, Request for Comments (RFC) 791 (Internet Architecture Board). The server also supports transport protocols, such as, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Real Time Transport Protocol (RTP), or Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP). The transport protocols support various types of data transmission standards, such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Network Time Protocol (NTP), or the like.
Communications network 112 provides a transmission medium for communicating among the system components. Communications network 112 includes a wired and/or wireless local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), or metropolitan area network (MAN), such as an organization's intranet, a local internet, the global-based Internet (including the World Wide Web (WWW)), an extranet, a virtual private network, licensed wireless telecommunications spectrum for digital cell (including CDMA, TDMA, GSM, EDGE, GPRS, CDMA2000, WCDMA FDD and/or TDD or TD-SCDMA technologies), or the like. Communications network 112 includes wired, wireless, or both transmission media, including satellite, terrestrial (e.g., fiber optic, copper, UTP, STP, coaxial, hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC), or the like), radio, free-space optics, microwave, and/or any other form or method of transmission.
The Web Assistant Manager 116 is responsible for the knowledge of which web site is supported by the system and for the process of combining data from the Context UI Repository 202, the Automation Repository 201 and the Personal Data Manager 203 to an alternative web site interface building instructions.
The Web Assistant Engine 210 is a facade for the Web Assistant Manager and is responsible for managing the Web Assistant Application Programming Interface (API) and for synchronizing the activities of the other Web Assistant Manager subcomponents.
The Service Automation Repository 201 contains a list of supported web services together with API created to support those services. These APIs can be used to activate actions supplied by these services.
The Context UI Repository 202 contains alternative, possibly personalized user interfaces for the various supported web sites.
The Personal Data Manager 203 manages all known users' personal data, including account details, preferred user names, passwords, address, etc. For security reasons, the actual personal data may reside on the user's computer as a web browser cookie or encoded on the server, decoded with a key available only to the user, upon request. The Web Assistant Manager 116 may use the Personal Data Manager 203 to automatically deduce registration details for new websites based on such previously used data. The User may also use the Personal Data Manager to manage his existing personal data, change it or delete it altogether.
The Display Proxy 102/114 is responsible for fetching the original web site request and for taking the Web Assistant Manager's alternative interface instructions, combining the two to create a new, simpler usage experience.
The Display Proxy Engine 211 is a facade for the Display Proxy and is responsible for managing the Display Proxy API and for synchronizing the activities of the other Display Proxy subcomponents.
The Communication Proxy 204 can fetch general web sites over the Communication's network 112, activate a transformation on the data and proxy it back to the User.
The Proxy Connector 205 receives an original web site and the Web Assistant Manager's alternative interface instructions. It is responsible for combining the two to create a new, simpler usage experience.
In
As described below with respect to
a-f illustrates an example of the user experience of using the system 100 for guidance in using web services. This sample screenshots represent exemplary output displays viewable by a user using the described invention. The sample screenshots also represent exemplary output displays generated by the described invention.
a illustrates an online newspaper article that is of interest to a community of environmentally-aware users. A community moderator may wish to inform community members about this article and ask them to contact the exemplary social linking website VoteItNow to promote this article through voting. By contrast, without the system, the manager would probably resort to sending a pleading email with elaborate textual instructions on how to access the site, perform a registration and vote for the article.
b illustrates the same online newspaper article, enhanced with a simplified VoteItNow interface. The interface includes simple textual overview and a single “Start” button.
c shows the web browser after a user clicked the “Start” button. The button directed the VoteItNow website content via the Display Proxy 102 in its server-based configuration. The proxy contacted the Web Assistant Manager 116 that in turn detected that the user is not registered to the VoteItNow service and now offers a new wizard user interface to quickly setup a new VoteItNow account.
In
In
In
In one embodiment, a first step, step 400, is recognizing a user's activity with the web service. This step may be performed in any number of suitable manners, including an active application monitoring user activity and recognizing various activities, such as based on data interchanges/requests, e.g. such as retrieving a particular web URL, or in another example having an active overlay to recognize cursor or display activities relatives to various fields, such as for example recognizing that a user has entered a data entry field and based on the position of this field, recognizing the data entry field, for example a login field.
A next step, step 402, is providing a first interface to the user for performing an operation relating to the web service, where the first interface is different from the web service interface associated with the web service and the first interface include a plurality of graphical elements. By way of example,
In one embodiment, another step, step 404, is receiving user input commands via the first interface. As described above, these user input commands may be via a tactile interface, such as the example of a mouse or keyboard. The user enters the commands using common input techniques, such as clicking on a mouse button or depressing various keys on the keyboard, whereby the processing operations in the computing device recognize these inputs as being on the first interface.
A next step, step 406, is translating the user input commands into a format usable by the web service. This translation may include processing operations that recognize the user input received in step 404 and then referencing a proper input command for the web service interface. For example, one embodiment of translation may include rewriting the input code based on programming parameters, another embodiment may include a look-up table or other type of reference to convert the first interface command into a command usable by the web service. It is recognized that this typically uses web services having predefined input commands, or may utilize a particular interface having generalized or uniform input techniques.
In this methodology, a next step, step 408, is providing the translated input commands to the web service to bypass existing web service input commands provided by the web service interface. The step may include providing the translating input commands directly to the processing component operating the web service, or in another embodiment may include a script or other type of automated operation to cause the translated commands to be entered directly into the web service interface. Regardless of the specific technique or embodiment, the user enters input information via the first interface, where the first interface is a user friendly interface, and the input in then provided directly to the web service, accordingly guiding the user to operate simplified computing operations for common web service activities.
Another step may include step 410, where the computer-implemented method includes receiving an output from the web service in response to the translated input commands. In step 412, the method may further include translating the output for display via the first interface, such that the user is presented with additional interactivity in the web service via the first interface. It is further noted that this methodology may be performed by a centrally located device, such as for example on a web server or may also be locally performed, such as an application running on a local processing device.
Additional embodiments are recognized using the above-noted methodology, as may be implemented in the above-described computing environment. For example, another embodiment may include the recognition of repetitive input commands to the web service interface, translating the input information for a generalized input command usable with the first interface and providing the generalized input command in place of the repetitive input command. This operation may be beneficial to assist users from cumbersome repetitive tasks, such as for example having to login to a large number of websites.
Another embodiment in the first interface may include darkening portions of the overlay directly over the web service interface such that un-darkened portions illustrate selectable interface components to be selected by the user. The first interface may also include displaying a new selectable visual component for user selection instead of the existing visual components in the web service interface. An example may be the display of a large “enter” button for the user to select upon entering information, which could alleviate a user having to search the web service interface for the native enter command bar.
Another embodiment may include the first interface including a graphical overlay of one or more video elements providing direct visual instructions for the user to perform steps for interacting with the underlying web service interface. These videos may be pre-designed for various features or aspects on the web service interface and when the user encounters these specifically designated areas, launching or displaying of the videos can provide an additional level of user interactivity.
Another embodiment, relative to the system of
An additional embodiment includes additional processing operations including monitoring user activities on the web services to generate activity logs and providing the activity logs to a system administrator. For example, in
Another embodiment includes the bypassing operation, e.g. see step 408 of
Another embodiment includes the bypassing operation, e.g. see step 408 of
Another embodiment may include processing operations to remember a user's favorite starting page within a web site and automatically browsing to that page when the site is first visited. Typically, a user visits a welcome or home page and must navigate to the desired page, but the navigation sequence or sub-page can be noted by the processing device on the sub-page automatically presented to the user upon returning to the web service or upon successful completion of a login activity.
Another embodiment may include back-end processing operations to translate relevant information in a web site from a foreign language to a native language. Another technique can include chaining common web site actions such that they will be initiated via a single new action. The new action may include performing multiple actions on a single web site, performing multiple actions on multiple web sites or a series of related actions across multiple web sites. One example of a common action may be logging into to numerous web sites with a single action. In another example, a user may like to link or attach a number of articles in a single email.
Another embodiment allows further central control for the user through the first interface. For example, the user may be able to manage multiple web sites through a central location, such as through the interface. This embodiment may include programming functionality whereby various aspects to the various web sites can be actively managed, such as the example of managing really simple subscription (RSS) feeds, managing notification techniques such as the example of updating an email address or other contact information.
Through the above-described embodiments, the user is provided through a system and method for guiding the user to operate simplified computing operations for common web service activities. Other aspects would become apparent to those skilled in the relevant art(s) in view of the teachings of the present disclosure.
In software implementations, computer software (e.g., programs or other instructions) and/or data is stored on a machine readable medium as part of a computer program product, and is loaded into a computer system or other device or machine via a removable storage drive, hard drive, or communications interface. Computer programs (also called computer control logic or computer readable program code) are stored in a main and/or secondary memory, and executed by a processor to cause the processor to perform the functions of the invention as described herein. In this document, the terms “machine readable medium,” “computer program medium” and “computer usable medium” are used to generally refer to media such as a removable storage unit (e.g., a magnetic or optical disc, flash ROM, or the like), a hard disk, signals (i.e., electronic, electromagnetic, or optical signals), or the like.
The foregoing description of the specific embodiments will so fully reveal the general nature of the invention that others can, by applying knowledge within the skill of the relevant art(s) (including the contents of the documents cited and incorporated by reference herein), readily modify and/or adapt for various applications such specific embodiments, without undue experimentation, without departing from the general concept of the present invention. Therefore, such adaptations and modifications are intended to be within the meaning and range of equivalents of the disclosed embodiments, based on the teaching and guidance presented herein. It is to be understood that the phraseology or terminology herein is for the purpose of description and not of limitation, such that the terminology or phraseology of the present specification is to be interpreted by the skilled artisan in light of the teachings and guidance presented herein, in combination with the knowledge of one skilled in the art.
While various embodiments of the present invention have been described above, it should be understood that they have been presented by way of example, and not limitation. It would be apparent to one skilled in the relevant art(s) that various changes in form and detail could be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Thus, the present invention should not be limited by any of the above-described exemplary embodiments, but should be defined only in accordance with the following claims and their equivalents.
This application is claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/886,040, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GUIDING NON-TECHNICAL PEOPLE IN USING WEB SERVICES,” filed on Jan. 22, 2007, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60886040 | Jan 2007 | US |
