Eyewear Notification Filtering with Customizable Low-Power Visual Alerts

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing smart glasses inundate users with excessive information, consuming processing resources and battery life, and fail to selectively present messages of interest, leading to user distraction and frustration.

Innovation Solution

An electronic eyewear device uses a low-power processor to filter notifications based on user-defined attributes, activating a customizable visual indicator only for messages deemed relevant, thereby conserving battery life and reducing distractions.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Loss of information

If all notifications are displayed to users, then users receive complete information, but users experience distraction and frustration due to excessive information

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvenotification information completenessVSAvoiduser distraction
Core Design Contradiction:
Loss of informationVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts and displays only the most relevant notification attributes (such as sender identity, message preview, or priority level) while omitting less important details. This selective extraction allows users to receive essential information without being overwhelmed by complete notification content, thereby reducing distraction while maintaining information completeness.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent applies different display qualities or levels of detail to different notifications based on their importance, priority, or type. High-priority notifications receive more prominent display treatment while lower-priority ones are summarized or deferred, creating a differentiated information presentation that reduces overall user distraction while preserving critical information.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #3Local quality

2Loss of information

If all notifications are processed and displayed, then users have access to all messages, but processing resources and battery life are consumed excessively

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvemessage delivery completenessVSAvoidbattery consumption
Core Design Contradiction:
Loss of informationVSUse of energy by moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The system extracts only essential notification attributes for display on the eyewear device while leaving detailed message content on the mobile device. This extraction approach minimizes processing requirements on the battery-constrained eyewear device while ensuring users can access complete message information through their mobile device, thereby reducing battery consumption without sacrificing message delivery completeness.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent implements partial processing of notifications by displaying only summarized or key information on the eyewear device, with the option for users to access complete information on their mobile device. This partial action approach reduces the processing load and energy consumption on the eyewear device while maintaining full access to message content when needed.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #16Partial or excessive action

3Loss of information

If standard programming languages and operations are used to process messages, then comprehensive message processing is achieved, but processing resources are consumed excessively

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvemessage processing capabilityVSAvoidprocessing resource consumption
Core Design Contradiction:
Loss of informationVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts only the essential attributes and information needed for immediate notification display, leaving comprehensive message processing and analysis to the mobile device with its greater computational resources. This extraction strategy enables the eyewear device to function with simplified processing while maintaining full message processing capability through the connected mobile device.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The mobile device acts as an intermediary that handles complex message processing, analysis, and filtering operations, then transmits only the essential results to the eyewear device. This intermediary approach allows comprehensive message processing to be achieved without requiring the eyewear device to perform resource-intensive operations locally.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Data Source

PatentEP3948542B1Eyewear with customizable notifications
Publication Date: 2025.07.16 SNAP INC
  • EP3948542B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP3948542B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP3948542B1 patent drawingFigure 3

AI summary

Systems and methods for generating an alert on an eyewear device are provided. The systems and methods include receiving, by an eyewear device, from a mobile device, data indicative of a first combination of notification attributes that trigger a first alert on the eyewear device; determining that the mobile device has received a new notification based on additional data received from the mobile device; determining that a combination of attributes of the new notification matches the first combination of notification attributes; and in response to determining that the combination of the attributes of the new notification matches the first combination of notification attributes, retrieving, from a storage device of the eyewear device, a first visual indicator animation that represents the first alert; and activating a visual indicator of the eyewear device in accordance with the retrieved first visual indicator animation to generate the first alert on the eyewear device.