Hierarchical Document Revision History Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current document revision history display systems lack a hierarchical structure, making it difficult to navigate and understand complex revision histories, and often limit the information available for user operations beyond simple undo functionality.
Innovation Solution
A method and system for generating and navigating a graphical representation of a filtered workflow history, which involves accessing data objects related to user events, filtering them based on criteria, and displaying a subset of these objects with timestamps in a graphical user interface, allowing for detailed visualization and playback of video content associated with the revisions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If all user operations are displayed in a flat list without hierarchical grouping, then complete revision history is preserved, but navigation and understanding become difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The revision history is segmented into hierarchical groups based on document structure (pages, sections, paragraphs). Each segment contains operations related to that specific structural element, allowing users to navigate to relevant segments directly rather than scrolling through all operations. This segmentation preserves complete history while making navigation efficient through contextual grouping.
Solution Approach 2:
The flat one-dimensional list of operations is transformed into a multi-dimensional hierarchical structure with multiple levels of grouping (document → page → section → operation). This adds structural dimensions that reflect the document's organization, enabling users to navigate through multiple levels to reach specific operations, thereby maintaining completeness while improving accessibility.
2Loss of information
If operations are displayed with detailed information, then understanding of revisions is improved, but interface complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Different levels of the hierarchical interface provide different densities of information. Higher-level groupings (document, page) show summarized operation counts and types, while lower-level expansions reveal detailed operation specifics. This local variation in information density allows users to access comprehensive details when needed while maintaining a clean overview at higher levels, balancing information completeness with interface simplicity.
3Ease of operation
If filtering capabilities are added to revision history display, then relevant information is easier to find, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The hierarchical structure acts as an intermediary between the complete operation set and user queries. Instead of implementing complex filtering algorithms, the pre-established hierarchical groups (by document structure, operation type, time period) serve as natural filters. Users navigate to relevant hierarchical levels to retrieve filtered information, reducing system complexity while maintaining effective filtering capabilities.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and technique for displaying a document's workflow history are disclosed. The system includes a graphical user interface for displaying one or more graphical representations of events generated by an application configured to edit a document. Each of the events generated by the application may be stored in a data structure that is associated with one or more portions of the document. The data structure may also be associated with a digital image that reflects the state of the document at the time the event was generated and one or more frames of digital video captured substantially simultaneously with the generation of the event. The system may display the stored events via graphical representations in the graphical user interface that represent a portion of the total document workflow history. A user may navigate through the graphical events based on a hierarchical algorithm for clustering events.