Context-Aware Digital Personal Assistant Multi-Account Interaction

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Solution Overview

Problem

Conventional digital personal assistants are limited to interacting with a single user account and lack the ability to seamlessly manage multiple accounts or facilitate interactions among multiple digital personal assistants, leading to inefficiencies in content access and operation performance.

Innovation Solution

A context-aware digital personal assistant system that supports multiple accounts by determining user context through various factors, selectively combining content from multiple accounts, and enabling authorized operations between digital personal assistants to enhance user experience and efficiency.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Ease of operation

If a digital personal assistant is limited to a single user account, then the system complexity is reduced and ease of operation is improved, but the adaptability and versatility are worsened as it cannot manage multiple accounts or facilitate interactions among multiple digital personal assistants

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveease of operationVSAvoidadaptability
Core Design Contradiction:
Ease of operationVSAdaptability or versatility

Solution Approach 1:

The digital personal assistant is designed to support multiple user accounts and enable cross-assistant operations, transforming it from a single-function tool into a multi-functional system that can serve multiple users and coordinate with other assistants across different devices

Inventive Principle:
Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

2Adaptability or versatility

If a digital personal assistant supports multiple accounts and cross-assistant operations, then the adaptability and versatility are improved, but the device complexity and difficulty of operation are worsened

Engineering Contradiction:
ImproveadaptabilityVSAvoiddevice complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Adaptability or versatilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system introduces intermediary components including authorization mechanisms that mediate between different user accounts and assistants, and context determination modules that act as intermediaries to automatically identify the appropriate user context, thereby managing complexity without sacrificing multi-account capability

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

3Adaptability or versatility

If a digital personal assistant supports multiple accounts and cross-assistant operations, then the adaptability is improved, but the ease of operation is worsened due to increased complexity in managing multiple accounts and contexts

Engineering Contradiction:
ImproveadaptabilityVSAvoidease of operation
Core Design Contradiction:
Adaptability or versatilityVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The digital personal assistant implements self-service through automatic context determination, where the system autonomously identifies the current user context based on available information without requiring manual intervention from the user to switch accounts or configure settings

Inventive Principle:
Principle #25Self-service

Solution Approach 2:

The system employs feedback mechanisms to continuously monitor and determine user context based on various signals, adjusting its behavior automatically based on the detected context, thereby maintaining ease of operation while supporting multiple accounts

Inventive Principle:
Principle #23Feedback

4Device complexity

If manual content filtering is required across multiple accounts, then the device complexity is reduced, but the productivity and user efficiency are worsened

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvedevice complexityVSAvoidproductivity
Core Design Contradiction:
Device complexityVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs automatic context determination and content filtering without requiring manual user intervention, with the digital personal assistant autonomously identifying the appropriate user context and filtering content based on that context, thereby eliminating manual filtering tasks

Inventive Principle:
Principle #25Self-service

Data Source

PatentEP3449609B1Facilitating interaction among digital personal assistants
Publication Date: 2021.07.07 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC
  • EP3449609B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP3449609B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP3449609B1 patent drawingFigure 3

AI summary

Techniques are described herein that are capable of implementing a context-aware digital personal assistant (DPA) that supports multiple accounts and/or facilitating interaction among digital personal assistants. For example, a user may be signed-in with accounts of a DPA. Content from content streams associated with the respective accounts may be selectively combined based on at least the user's context. In another example, users who are signed-in with accounts of a DPA may share a user experience provided by the DPA. Content from content streams associated with the respective accounts may be selectively combined based on at least one or more of the users' context. In yet another example, a first DPA associated with a first user may be caused to perform an operation on behalf of a second DPA associated with a second user or to delegate the operation to the second DPA.