Method for categorizing, describing and modeling types of system users: Key Neurotech Patent #7

– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 6,405,159

Today we are shar­ing a 2002 patent assigned to AT&T Labs, Inc. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing a foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patent a day, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 6,405,159: Method for cat­e­go­riz­ing, describ­ing and mod­el­ing types of sys­tem users

• Assignee(s): AT&T Labs, Inc.
• Inventor(s): Robert R. Bushey, Jen­nifer M. Mauney
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neu­roCog­ni­tive Training
• Issue Date: June 11, 2002

SharpBrains’ Take:

While user inter­faces (UIs) are often gener­i­cal­ly built for large groups, orga­ni­za­tions or even the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, the ‘159 patent dis­clos­es teach­ings that rec­og­nize that mod­els of each user based on unique per­son­al indi­ca­tors may be applied to tai­lor a UI to spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als and increase per­for­mance in impor­tant behav­ioral areas. The sys­tem con­sid­ers and charts users on many dimen­sions, includ­ing cog­ni­tive work­load (as recit­ed in depen­dent claim 9), in order to mod­el the user and pro­vide a cus­tomiz­able UI. The ‘159 patent includes a robust spec­i­fi­ca­tion with 21 illus­tra­tion sheets and 22 pages of writ­ten descrip­tion. Fac­tors that make the ‘159 patent a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy include the exten­sive spec­i­fi­ca­tion and the impor­tance of con­sid­er­ing indi­vid­ual cog­ni­tion to improve qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty of indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions through bet­ter com­put­ing interfaces.

Abstract:

A method for cat­e­go­riz­ing, describ­ing, and mod­el­ing types of sys­tem users where infor­ma­tion from the mod­els can be used in design­ing a user inter­face. Users may have improved per­for­mance using the user inter­face. A list of ten­ta­tive behav­iors of the users is cre­at­ed. This list is cre­at­ed by iden­ti­fy­ing the goals desired for the user inter­face or the user mod­els, and list­ing expect­ed and desired behav­iors that are rel­e­vant to these goals. The list is revised to include only those behav­iors that are impor­tant or fre­quent based on the goals. Cat­e­go­riz­ing the behav­iors is per­formed by obtain­ing infor­ma­tion from users regard­ing their char­ac­ter­is­tics and behav­iors. Each user’s behav­ioral infor­ma­tion is then con­vert­ed to a score or val­ue. The users are then mapped or chart­ed based on which behav­iors they exhib­it. The map­ping or chart­ing is ana­lyzed to iden­ti­fy clus­ters of users. These clus­ters define groups of users that have sim­i­lar behav­iors. The groups are then ana­lyzed to pro­duce descrip­tions of each group. This con­sists of select­ing one or more users from each group and obtain­ing addi­tion­al behav­ioral infor­ma­tion. This addi­tion­al behav­ioral infor­ma­tion is ana­lyzed to pro­duce descrip­tions for each group. These descrip­tions are then used to for­mu­late mod­els of behav­iors for each group. Infor­ma­tion from these mod­els can be used to design and cre­ate a user inter­face that helps increase user per­for­mance when using this user interface.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 1. A method for mod­el­ing types of sys­tem users, the mod­els being used to pro­vide data for design­ing a sys­tem user inter­face, comprising:

• cat­e­go­riz­ing behav­iors of a plu­ral­i­ty of types of users into at least two groups of users, each group includ­ing at least one user and at least one oth­er user, the at least one user hav­ing behav­ior that dif­fers from behav­ior of the at least one oth­er user;
• describ­ing behav­iors of each group of users, based on behav­iors of select­ed users from each group; and
• mod­el­ing the described behav­iors of each group to design a desired user interface.

To learn more about mar­ket data, trends and lead­ing com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal brain health space –dig­i­tal plat­forms for brain/ cog­ni­tive assess­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and enhance­ment– check out this mar­ket report. To learn more about our analy­sis of 10,000+ patent fil­ings, check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.