Digital Assistant Search Augmentation via Schedule Context
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional digital assistants do not consider a user's schedule items when processing search requests, leading to less personalized and efficient responses.
Innovation Solution
A digital assistant system that identifies relevant schedule items, such as calendar events, reminders, and to-do items, to augment search requests by refining search criteria, adding new criteria, or modifying existing ones based on the information from these items, thereby improving response relevance and user experience.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the digital assistant processes only the explicit search criteria provided by the user, then the processing speed and simplicity are maintained, but the relevance and personalization of the search results deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The digital assistant performs preliminary actions by proactively retrieving and analyzing the user's schedule items (calendar events, reminders, to-dos) before processing the search request. This allows the system to pre-process contextual information that will be used to augment the search criteria, thereby improving result relevance without significantly increasing perceived processing time for the user.
Solution Approach 2:
The system serves itself by automatically accessing and interpreting the user's schedule data without requiring explicit user input. The digital assistant independently identifies relevant schedule items, extracts contextual information (location, time, participants), and uses this information to refine search criteria, making the system self-sufficient in gathering contextual data needed for personalized search enhancement.
2Measurement precision
If the digital assistant integrates schedule information to augment search requests, then the personalization and efficiency of search results are improved, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the complex task of search augmentation into distinct modular components: (1) schedule item retrieval module, (2) relevance determination module that matches search criteria with schedule items, (3) information extraction module, and (4) search request augmentation module. This segmentation allows each component to handle a specific aspect of the process independently, managing overall system complexity through modular design.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary contextual information layer between the user's search request and the search execution. This intermediary layer processes schedule data and generates augmented search criteria, acting as a mediator that translates raw schedule information into refined search parameters. This intermediary structure simplifies the overall system architecture by creating a clear separation between data sources and search execution.
3Measurement precision
If the digital assistant retrieves and analyzes multiple schedule items, then the accuracy of user intent understanding is improved, but the time and computational resources required increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies local quality by focusing computational resources on retrieving and analyzing only those schedule items that are locally relevant to the current search context. Instead of processing all schedule items uniformly, the system selectively retrieves items based on their potential relevance to the search domain and criteria, thereby reducing processing time while maintaining accurate user intent understanding.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements partial action by retrieving a subset of schedule items that are most likely to be relevant to the search request, rather than comprehensively analyzing all possible schedule data. The system determines partial relevance based on temporal proximity, location matching, and domain alignment, performing sufficient analysis to improve intent understanding without the overhead of exhaustive processing of all schedule items.
Data Source
AI summary
A method includes receiving a search request from a user, the search request specifying one or more search criteria for selecting one or more selection items from a respective selection domain; identifying one or more schedule items relevant to the search request; augmenting the search request based on information contained in at least one of the identified schedule items; and presenting the augmented search request or search results retrieved based on the augmented search request to the user.