Cursor Management for Incomplete Multi-User Interactions
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Solution Overview
Problem
Modern electronic displays in vehicles, such as aircraft cockpits, face challenges with limited viewable areas and overlapping information, leading to inefficient and error-prone interactions due to the need for panning and zooming to select desired elements, especially when multiple GUI displays are concurrently used by different users.
Innovation Solution
A user input management service that assigns identifiers to user input streams, maintaining associations between user inputs and applications, allowing seamless transitions across GUI layers by continuing to respond intuitively to user inputs even when they move across different applications, ensuring coherent and continuous interaction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If multiple GUI displays are concurrently depicted to provide comprehensive information, then information completeness is improved, but interaction complexity and error rate increase due to overlapping elements and limited viewable area
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments user inputs by assigning unique identifiers to different input streams, allowing the touchscreen to distinguish between simultaneous inputs from different users. This segmentation enables each user's selections to be processed independently without interference, resolving the interaction complexity issue while maintaining comprehensive information display
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary layer (the identifier assignment system) between the touchscreen hardware and the application software. This intermediary manages the message streams from multiple users, routing them appropriately to prevent errors caused by overlapping interactions on the shared display surface
2Area of stationary object
If display area is reduced to fit cockpit constraints, then space utilization is improved, but selection precision deteriorates due to overlapping elements requiring panning and zooming
Solution Approach 1:
The system maintains continuous tracking of user input streams across display transitions. When users pan or zoom the display, the identifier-based tracking ensures that selection intent is preserved continuously without loss, maintaining selection precision even as the viewable area changes dynamically
3Ease of operation
If touchscreen is placed between pilot and co-pilot for shared access, then accessibility is improved, but input stream confusion increases leading to incorrect application responses
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies local quality by assigning distinct identifier characteristics to input streams based on their source location or user. This allows the system to differentiate and process inputs from the pilot versus the co-pilot separately, ensuring that each user's selections are reliably directed to the intended applications without confusion
Data Source
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AI summary
Methods and systems are provided for resolving a user input. One method involves assigning a first identifier to a first stream of messages from a user input device corresponding to a first user input with respect to an application, and while a user interaction state associated with the first stream of messages is active, assigning a second identifier to a second stream of messages from the user input device, and in response to detecting the second identifier corresponds to the first identifier, deactivating the first stream of messages associated with the first stream of messages, wherein deactivating the first stream of messages results in the application responding to the second stream of messages corresponding to the second user input.