Collaborative View Tracking for Interactive Whiteboards
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Solution Overview
Problem
Collaboration between multiple users in interactive sessions becomes cumbersome due to independent navigation and view management within collaborative applications, leading to difficulties in maintaining a unified view and facilitating discussion.
Innovation Solution
A method for tracking and manipulating views during a collaboration session, where a lead participant's view is identified and communicated to follower participants' devices, allowing them to lock their views to the lead participant's view for easier navigation and collaboration.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple users navigate the application independently in a collaborative session, then each user can freely explore and annotate different views, but collaboration becomes cumbersome and maintaining a unified view becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically switches between two operational modes: independent navigation mode where each user can freely explore, and unified view mode where all users follow the lead participant's view. This dynamic transition resolves the contradiction by allowing the system to adapt its behavior based on collaboration needs.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where the lead participant's actions are transmitted to follower participants, creating a feedback loop that synchronizes views. This feedback mechanism enables efficient collaboration while preserving the ability for independent exploration when needed.
2Productivity
If all participants maintain independent views, then each participant can annotate and contribute independently, but discussions and presentations become more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments participant roles into lead and follower participants, creating distinct functional segments. The lead participant maintains independent annotation capability while follower participants receive view synchronization. This segmentation allows both independent contribution and ease of discussion to coexist.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces an intermediary view synchronization mechanism that mediates between independent annotations and unified presentation. This intermediary layer transmits lead participant's view changes to followers, enabling smooth transitions between independent work and collaborative discussion modes.
3Ease of operation
If the system provides view tracking functionality, then participants can follow each other's views for better collaboration, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The view tracking system is designed with multi-functionality, serving multiple purposes: view synchronization, lead participant identification, and collaborative navigation. By making the system universal, the patent reduces the need for separate complex subsystems while achieving view tracking capabilities.
Data Source
AI summary
A method is described for manipulating a view displayed on one or more follower participants' devices to track a view displayed on a lead participant's device. A request to manipulate the view displayed on the one or more follower participant devices is received. The lead participant is identified. The follower participants are identified. A lead view of the lead participant is determined. The lead view is communicated to the follower participants computing devices for display. A computing device and a non-transitory computer readable medium having instructions configured to implement the method are also described.