Entity Card Unified Interface for Software Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Software application bundles with an app-centric approach lead to inconsistent user experiences due to multiple distinct UIs, making it painful for users to access and navigate through various applications, and fail to effectively manage complex, interdependent organizational systems.
Innovation Solution
An entity-centric paradigm is adopted, where entities and their relationships are represented as nodes and edges in an organizational graph, allowing users to navigate based on their relationships and context, with applications being exposed relevantly in the background, using an AI analytics engine and organizational graph to provide insights and consistent UI across applications.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If an app-centric approach with multiple distinct software applications is used, then each application can have specialized functionality, but the user experience becomes inconsistent and navigation becomes complex across applications
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple application-specific interfaces into a single unified entity-centric interface. The system combines data and functionality from multiple applications (CRM, marketing automation, support systems) into a common organizational graph where entities like customers and companies are represented once with unified access points, eliminating the need for users to navigate multiple distinct application interfaces.
Solution Approach 2:
The entity card serves as a universal interface that can represent and provide access to different types of entities (customers, companies, contacts) and different application functionalities (sales, marketing, support) through a single consistent UI pattern. This multi-functional card design allows the same interface structure to handle diverse data types and application contexts.
2Productivity
If multiple software applications with distinct UIs are implemented, then each application can be optimized for its specific task, but users face inconsistency and pain when accessing multiple applications
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments information access into entity-specific cards rather than application-specific interfaces. Each entity card is segmented into relevant sections (overview, interactions, related entities) that can be independently configured based on the entity type and user context, allowing optimized information presentation without requiring separate application navigation.
Solution Approach 2:
The entity card acts as an intermediary between the user and the underlying application systems. Instead of users directly accessing multiple applications, the card intermediary provides a unified access point that translates user requests into appropriate application-specific actions behind the scenes, reducing navigation time while maintaining task optimization.
3Ease of operation
If an entity-centric paradigm with organizational graphs is used, then users can navigate based on relationships and context, but the system complexity increases with AI analytics engines and graph management
Solution Approach 1:
The organizational graph system operates autonomously by automatically discovering and maintaining entity relationships through event listening and data synchronization. The graph structure self-updates as new data arrives from integrated applications, and the system automatically determines which entity cards to display based on user context without requiring manual configuration or complex administrative overhead.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-computing and storing entity relationships in the organizational graph structure before users need them. The AI analytics engine pre-processes data to identify relevant entities and relationships, so when users interact with the system, the navigation paths and related entities are already prepared and immediately available, reducing perceived system complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
An entity-centric approach has been proposed to provide a consistent user experience in accessing a unified software applications suite effortlessly. Entities are connected with one another. The entities and the connectivity between them are reflected in all three functional layers of 3-tier client-server architecture. Every entity has a set of attributes and each attribute represents a data item or record of a particular type. The data items or records are represented in the form of card(s) as determined by contextualization and access control engines. The contextualization engine determines the origin of the user. The access control engine determines the access permission of every user.