Online Address Book Profile Bookmarking for Contact Discovery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face challenges in connecting with new contacts on the internet due to a lack of immediate access to background information, making it difficult to determine if they would be a good fit for their network, especially when encountering interesting content on professional or social networking sites without further profile information.
Innovation Solution
An online address book with a multi-use input bar and profile bookmarking capabilities allows users to search for and bookmark social profiles from various networking sites, gathering publicly available information and creating a new contact record without needing to be connected to the candidate, enabling users to build a profile and track status updates before deciding to connect.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If users manually search for and evaluate contact information across multiple networking sites, then they can gather background information on candidate contacts, but this process consumes excessive time and effort
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically searching for and gathering contact information from multiple networking sites before the user needs to evaluate the contact. The online address book proactively collects publicly available information including profile summaries, status updates, and contact details, so that when a user encounters a candidate contact, the information is already prepared and ready for immediate review.
Solution Approach 2:
The system serves itself by automatically executing the information gathering process without requiring user intervention. The online address book autonomously searches multiple networking sites, retrieves contact profiles, and organizes the information, eliminating the need for users to manually search and compile contact details from various sources.
2Reliability
If users require complete profile information before deciding to connect with a candidate contact, then they can make informed networking decisions, but this requirement creates barriers to discovering new contacts
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies partial action by gathering and displaying only the most essential contact information immediately (such as name, basic profile summary, and key status updates) rather than requiring complete profile data. This allows users to make preliminary assessments with sufficient information while the system continues to collect additional details in the background, enabling informed decisions without waiting for complete information.
Solution Approach 2:
The contact information is segmented into priority levels, with critical information (name, basic profile, key status updates) displayed immediately for decision-making, while less critical information is collected and made available on demand. This segmentation allows users to evaluate contacts with the most important information first, reducing barriers to contact discovery while maintaining reliability of decision-making.
3Loss of information
If users manually compile contact records from multiple networking sites, then they can create comprehensive contact profiles, but this process increases device complexity and user burden
Solution Approach 1:
The online address book serves multiple functions: it acts as a contact database, an automated information gathering system, a profile aggregation platform, and a networking tool all in one. The system universally handles information from multiple networking sites, automatically parsing and organizing contact data from different sources into a unified profile structure, eliminating the need for separate tools for each function.
Solution Approach 2:
The online address book acts as an intermediary between multiple networking sites and the user. It automatically interfaces with various networking platforms, retrieves contact information, and presents it in a standardized format, shielding users from the complexity of dealing with multiple different site formats and structures while maintaining comprehensive contact profiles.
Data Source
AI summary
An online address book is configured to include a multi-user input bar to receive search items intended to match contacts existing in a user's contact list. If a search term does not match any entry in the current contact list the search is extended by the multi-user input bar to include further candidate contacts. Candidate contacts are acquired through social profiles available from a set of networking sites linked-to over the Internet. A candidate contact that does match the search term is added to the contact list with a public profile whose contents are populated with contact data acquired from social profiles available through the networking sites. This practice of profile bookmarking may be applied iteratively across candidate contacts from various networking sites to build an extensive public profile.