Patent Grant
12088646
This application is directed to the fields of visual communications and user interfaces, and more particularly to the field of video conferencing with extra user grouping made possible by the presence of installed add-on immersive applications.
Video conferencing is quickly gaining the position of one of the top productivity and communications media. With the rise of a remote, geographically dispersed workforce, fully online distributed companies, hybrid work metaphor combining synchronous and asynchronous communications, and the necessity to overcome challenges and limitations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to connect people through their work, personal and family lives, education, entertainment, and other areas has become a key advantage of video conferencing solutions. According to the most recent market studies, the global video conferencing market is estimated to reach $22.5 billion by 2026. Over 75% of corporate businesses are already using video conferencing to facilitate team collaboration, while for 58% of companies it has become part of their daily operations.
On an average day, US businesses have over 11 million video conferencing meetings with hundreds of millions of daily participants: Zoom alone has over 300 million daily participants of its video meetings, Google Hangout Meets over 100 million daily participants, while Microsoft Teams had almost 75 million active daily users in 2020. Not only the overall volume but also an average size of webinars and video conferences is constantly increasing, thanks to multiple factors, such as the overall growth in popularity of the video communications, and the above-mentioned expansion of the distributed workforce residing in multiple locations and abandoning centralized physical meeting places, such as company headquarters. These factors are especially organic for the one billion strong category of knowledge workers.
Not surprisingly, the number of concurrent participants of a video conference offered by leading platforms, such as Zoom, Cisco Webex, BlueJeans and other solutions, has quickly increased to many hundreds and even thousands of people. Thus, Cisco Webex allows 100 participants for its free offer and 1000 participants for standard Webex Meetings. Zoom's offerings are more granular with up to 100 participants in any regular free or paid accounts (with a limited meeting time for free accounts) and a separate option of Large Meetings with 200, 300 and 500 participants. As for the Webinar variant, where all participants may watch but most cannot see each other or communicate, Webex and Zoom offer different limit of 3000 and 10000 total participants. In addition to increasing the audience size per meeting, many video conferencing vendors allow breakout sessions for portions of the audience and even splitting the whole audience into a number of breakout sessions (breakout rooms), up to 75 in Blue Jeans solution and 50 in Zoom.
Other important trends in video conferencing include audience feedback on the success of video conferencing, supported by an expanding set of features such as non-verbal reactions and embedded polls, and the emergence of video conferencing platforms (Zoom, in the first place) and important add-on platform applications, such as mmhmm with its immersive features and new presentation metaphor.
Notwithstanding the overall progress in video conferencing, its user feedback system, as well as sharing and immersive features are still suffering from multiple shortcomings. Breakout sessions are excessively centralized and cannot be held ad hoc by the initiative of non-hosting conference participants, even if such participants have powerful sharing platform-compatible add-ons installed on their devices. Recording options in breakout sessions are limited. Also, non-panelist webinar audience members usually don't have an opportunity to participate in the conference, and so the feedback of the audience members is limited to a couple of secondary features, and the audience members cannot communicate with each other.
Accordingly, it is important to develop techniques and systems for improving video conferencing experiences by employing immersive and communications add-ons to a video conferencing platform.
According to the system described herein, enhancing a video conference that is provided by video conference software includes a subset of participants of the video conference using a particular add-on application that is compatible with the video conference software, the add-on application obtaining communication parameters from the video conference software, discovering the subset of the participants, and the add-on application using the communication parameters from the video conference software to provide at least some of the subset of the participants with private communication that is independent of communication capabilities provided by the video conference software and to provide at least one visual indication to each of the subset of participants. The add-on application may provide specific data to the video conference software. The video conference software may provide the specific data to particular participants of the video conference independently of whether any of the particular participants have the add-on application. At least one visual indication may provided to each of the subset of participants indicating membership in a group corresponding to the subset of participants. The private communication may use a private view pane and a chat pane for at least some of the subset of participants. Each of the private view pane and the chat pane may be an overlay on top of a main video conferencing grid and/or may be provided in a separate pop-up window. The at least some of the subset of the participants may initiate an ad hoc breakout session separate from the video conference. The private communication may include the at least some of the subset of the participants exchanging text, audio, and/or video. The private communication may includes one-on-one video chatting, shared writing pads, shared whiteboards, gesture recognition, exaggerated gestures, and/or non-verbal communication features that provide feedback. One of the subset of participants of the video conference may be a separate presenter that is different from a presenter of the video conference and may be provided to the at least some of the subset of the participants using the private view pane and the chat pane. The at least some of the subset of the participants may be provided with a recording feature that is separate from any recording feature of the video conference software. The at least some of the subset of the participants may be provided with additional feedback features that are available only to the subset of the participants. The additional feedback features may include voting for a certain aspect of a video conference, addressing a request by a host and/or addressing a request by one or more of the subset of the participants. The additional feedback features may include using exaggerated gestures and emoticons. The additional feedback features may include simultaneously displaying a stats panel that provides feedback information. The feedback information may be displayed to all of the participants of the video conference. At least one of the participants of the subset of the participants may provide a setting to prevent interruption or discovery from other ones of the participants. At least one of the subset of the participants may have at least one other additional add-on application.
According further to the system described herein, a non-transitory computer readable medium contains software that enhances a video conference that is provided by video conference software. A subset of participants of the video conference use a particular add-on application that is compatible with the video conference software. Software for the add-on application includes executable code that obtains communication parameters from the video conference software and executable code that uses the communication parameters from the video conference software to provide at least some of the subset of the participants with private communication that is independent of communication capabilities provided by the video conference software and to provide at least one visual indication to each of the subset of participants. The add-on application may provide specific data to the video conference software. The video conference software may provide the specific data to particular participants of the video conference independently of whether any of the particular participants have the add-on application. At least one visual indication may provided to each of the subset of participants indicating membership in a group corresponding to the subset of participants. The private communication may use a private view pane and a chat pane for at least some of the subset of participants. Each of the private view pane and the chat pane may be an overlay on top of a main video conferencing grid and/or may be provided in a separate pop-up window. The at least some of the subset of the participants may initiate an ad hoc breakout session separate from the video conference. The private communication may include the at least some of the subset of the participants exchanging text, audio, and/or video. The private communication may includes one-on-one video chatting, shared writing pads, shared whiteboards, gesture recognition, exaggerated gestures, and/or non-verbal communication features that provide feedback. One of the subset of participants of the video conference may be a separate presenter that is different from a presenter of the video conference and may be provided to the at least some of the subset of the participants using the private view pane and the chat pane. The at least some of the subset of the participants may be provided with a recording feature that is separate from any recording feature of the video conference software. The at least some of the subset of the participants may be provided with additional feedback features that are available only to the subset of the participants. The additional feedback features may include voting for a certain aspect of a video conference, addressing a request by a host and/or addressing a request by one or more of the subset of the participants. The additional feedback features may include using exaggerated gestures and emoticons. The additional feedback features may include simultaneously displaying a stats panel that provides feedback information. The feedback information may be displayed to all of the participants of the video conference. At least one of the participants of the subset of the participants may provide a setting to prevent interruption or discovery from other ones of the participants. At least one of the subset of the participants may have at least one other additional add-on application.
The proposed system offers additional groupings (murmuration) of participants of a video conference through connections provided by immersive, communications capable applications installed on participant devices as add-ons, compatible with the video conferencing platform used by the participants. An initial discovery establishes additional connections between participants, which may be utilized for various purposes, supplementing the capabilities of the main video conference and including ad hoc breakout sessions with or without departing from the main conference, bringing all members of a murmuration into a panel view, immersive presentations by multiple participants, interactive and other advanced forms of recording of fragments of a video conference, and visual polling through exaggerated gestures as a proxy for the general sentiment of video conference participants. Additional groupings may be available to any portion of the audience of a video conference or a webinar, including webinar participants who may not communicate privately and/or visually via the regular platform features of a video conferencing platform.
Various aspects of system functioning are explained as follows:
Private views may also expand visualization and communication capabilities to a mixed audience, such as a mix of panelists and viewers of a webinar. Private views may be opened and closed at any time and may co-exist with the main video conference view (for example, as a set of minimized private views, activated by various members of a murmuration independently, on demand). The private views may be regularly updated as murmuration members arrive, leave, or change discovery and/or visibility preferences, as explained above.
Embodiments of the system described herein will now be explained in more detail in accordance with the figures of the drawings, which are briefly described as follows.
The system described herein provides a mechanism, workflow, and features for additional groupings (murmuration) of participants of a video conference through connections provided by immersive, communications capable applications installed on participant devices as add-ons; additional features may include ad hoc breakout sessions with or without departing from the main conference, immersive, interactive, and other advanced forms of recording, and visual polling through exaggerated gestures as a proxy for the general sentiment of video conference participants
Referring to
After the step 630, processing proceeds to a test step 635, where it is determined whether a request for a private view has been received for a group. If so, processing proceeds to a step 640, where group members accept or decline the request. After the step 640, processing proceeds to a test step 645, where it is determined whether a sufficient acceptance level for opening a private view has been received. If so, processing proceeds to a step 650, where a private review pane with group members is built and displayed. After the step 650, processing proceeds to a step 655, where group members are chatting within a private view pane. After the step 655, processing proceeds to a test step 660, where it is determined whether a group member has become the main presenter for the video conference. Note that the step 660 may be independently reached from the test step 635 if it is determined that a request for private view is not received or from the test step 645 if it is determined that the acceptance level is insufficient. If it is determined that a group member has become the main presenter for the video conference, processing proceeds to a test step 662, where it is determined whether the additional app associated with the group to which the current presenter belongs, allows for the immersive co-presenting. If so, processing proceeds to a test step 665, where it is determined whether the current presenter invites a group member (possibly by that member's request) to join as a co-presenter. If so, processing proceeds to a test step 670, where it is determined whether the co-presenter accepts. If so, processing proceeds to a step 672, where the co-presenter joins the presentation space in the immersive mode and the collaborative presentation proceeds.
After the step 672, processing proceeds to a test step 675, where it is determined whether a feedback request is sent to the participants. Note that the test step 675 may be independently reached from four other test steps: the test step 660, if it is determined that no group member is presenting; the test step 662, if it is determined that the add-on app associated with the group does not have an immersive co-presenting feature; the test step 665, if it is determined that that the presenter does not invite a group member; and the test step 670, if it is determined that the chosen co-presenter does not accept the invitation. If it is determined at the test step 675 that the feedback request has not been sent to the participants, processing is complete; otherwise, processing proceeds to a step 680, where the group members discuss and accept the feedback request (alternatively, the group members may decide to provide the feedback on their own, as explained elsewhere herein-see
An add-on application 750 has a set of features 760, explained elsewhere herein (see, for example,
Various embodiments discussed herein may be combined with each other in appropriate combinations in connection with the system described herein. Additionally, in some instances, the order of steps in the flowcharts, flow diagrams and/or described flow processing may be modified, where appropriate. Subsequently, system configurations and functioning may vary from the illustrations presented herein. Further, various aspects of the system described herein may be deployed on various devices, including, but not limited to servers, desktop computers, notebooks, smartphones, tablets, and other mobile computers. Smartphones and tablets may use operating system(s) selected from the group consisting of: iOS, Android OS, Windows Phone OS, Blackberry OS, and mobile versions of Linux OS. Servers, desktop computers, notebooks and tablets may use operating system selected from the group consisting of Mac OS, Windows OS, Linux OS, Chrome OS.
Software implementations of the system described herein may include executable code that is stored in a computer readable medium and executed by one or more processors. The computer readable medium may be non-transitory and include a computer hard drive, ROM, RAM, flash memory, portable computer storage media such as a CD-ROM, a DVD-ROM, a flash drive, an SD card and/or other drive with, for example, a universal serial bus (USB) interface, and/or any other appropriate tangible or non-transitory computer readable medium or computer memory on which executable code may be stored and executed by a processor. The software may be bundled (pre-loaded), installed from an app store or downloaded from a location of a network operator. The system described herein may be used in connection with any appropriate operating system.
Other embodiments of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from a consideration of the specification or practice of the invention disclosed herein. It is intended that the specification and examples be considered as exemplary only, with the true scope and spirit of the invention being indicated by the following claims.
This application claims priority to U.S. Prov. App. No. 63/196,860, filed on Jun. 4, 2021, and entitled “USER GROUPING VIA IMMERSIVE ADD-ON APPLICATIONS FOR EXTENDED VIDEO CONFERENCING EXPERIENCES AND FEEDBACK”, which is incorporated herein by reference.
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| Number | Date | Country | |
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| 63196860 | Jun 2021 | US |
