Collaborative Shopping Interface with Private Side Sessions
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current online shopping systems lack the ability to facilitate collaborative and private shopping sessions effectively, where multiple users can interact and make purchases together while ensuring secure and private interactions.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that enables collaborative shopping sessions by sharing a common interface among users, allowing cursor movement and item selection, with features for designating primary accounts for payment and private sessions with special access or pricing, and managing funding through joint accounts or primary accounts.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a common interface is shared among multiple users for collaborative shopping, then user interaction and collaboration are improved, but cursor control and interface management become more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The interface is segmented into distinct control zones: a common display area shared by all users and individual cursor control areas for each user. This segmentation allows multiple users to interact simultaneously without complete confusion of control, resolving the complexity of unified interface management.
Solution Approach 2:
A server acts as an intermediary between multiple client devices and the common interface. The server receives cursor movement requests from any user, processes them according to defined rules, and manages cursor positioning on the shared display, thereby simplifying the complexity of direct user-to-interface control.
2Productivity
If multiple users can simultaneously control cursor movement on a common interface, then collaborative item selection is improved, but cursor control conflicts increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously monitors cursor positions and user actions in real-time. When multiple users attempt to control the cursor simultaneously, the system provides feedback by tracking which user's cursor is most recently positioned or has highest priority, thereby resolving conflicts and maintaining stable control while preserving collaborative efficiency.
3Ease of manufacture
If a single user's account is used for purchases during collaborative shopping, then payment processing is simplified, but financial responsibility becomes unclear
Solution Approach 1:
The payment account structure is segmented into multiple user-specific accounts within the collaborative shopping session. Each user has their own account associated with their purchases, allowing simplified processing through a unified system while maintaining clear financial responsibility attribution to individual users through separate account tracking.
Data Source
AI summary
Examples of a method and system for collaborative and private sessions are provided. In some aspects a collaborative shopping session including a first user and one or more other users is established. The establishing of the session including displaying a common interface for the collaborative shopping session at respective computer systems of the first user and each of the one or more other users. A side session is initiated for a second user, the side session having a different interface in which activity within the side session by the second user is not shared with the first user or the one or more other users of the collaborative shopping session. A determination, based on one or more merge criterion, of whether to merge the side session with the collaborative session is made; and the side session is merged with the collaborative session based on the determining.