Context Resumption Across Group Devices via Preliminary Action
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for resuming a context across multiple electronic devices lack automation, requiring users to manually switch between devices and remember previous activities, which is inefficient for groups collaborating over different devices.
Innovation Solution
A system that collects and stores the context of user and participant electronic devices at the end of a collaboration session, allowing for seamless resumption of the context when the user device is powered on or brought out of sleep mode, including closing irrelevant applications on both user and participant devices.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If users manually switch between devices and remember previous activities, then they can resume work on different devices, but this process is inefficient and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically collecting and storing context information from multiple devices at the end of a collaboration session. This includes capturing application states, document positions, and other relevant data before users switch devices, eliminating the need for manual remembering and enabling seamless context resumption when devices are powered on or brought out of sleep mode
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service by automatically identifying participant devices, collecting their context information, and resuming contexts without user intervention. The context management system autonomously handles device detection, data collection, storage, and restoration, freeing users from manual device switching and context management tasks
2Reliability
If the system collects and stores context from multiple devices, then context continuity is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces a context management server as an intermediary between multiple user devices. This central mediator handles context collection, storage, and distribution, simplifying the overall system architecture by centralizing context management functionality and reducing direct device-to-device complexity while ensuring reliable context continuity across the device group
Solution Approach 2:
The context management server provides universal functionality by handling multiple tasks: identifying participant devices, collecting context information from various device types, storing context data, and resuming contexts across different devices. This multi-functional approach consolidates complexity into a single versatile system rather than requiring complex interactions between multiple specialized components
3Productivity
If the system automatically resumes context on participant devices, then user productivity increases, but the number of operations performed by the system increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary automation by pre-collecting and pre-storing context information from all participant devices before they need to be resumed. This advance preparation enables rapid, automated context restoration when devices are powered on or awakened, significantly improving group collaboration efficiency while the automation handles device identification, context collection, storage, and coordinated resumption across the device group
Data Source
AI summary
Approaches presented herein enable resuming a context for a group of electronic devices based on a prior activity of the group members. Specifically, a current context of a user electronic device is collected at a conclusion of a first collaboration session. One or more participant electronic devices associated with the user electronic device are identified, either by being in a same location or virtually connected. A current context of each of the identified participant electronic devices is collected. The context of the user electronic device and each of the participant electronic devices are stored in a context database. The current context of the user electronic device and each of the participant electronic devices are resumed at a beginning of a second collaboration session when the user electronic device is resumed (e.g., powered on or brought out of “sleep” mode).