Interactive Overlay for Web Conferencing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current web conferencing technologies do not fully enable interactive collaboration among participants, limiting users to passive viewing of shared content without the ability to modify or interact with it in real-time.
Innovation Solution
An information exchange system that allows recipients to interact with shared content by decoding pre-encoded interactive elements, enabling transformations and modifications locally without synchronizing changes back to the presenter, using an authoring subsystem, data channel, and application that creates an overlay for interaction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If screen sharing is implemented in web conferencing, then content can be displayed to all participants, but participants are limited to passive viewing without interaction
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the shared content into discrete interactive elements (hotspots) that can be independently manipulated. Each hotspot represents a specific region of the shared screen that recipients can interact with, allowing selective interaction rather than full-screen interactivity, thus balancing versatility with manageable complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces hotspots as intermediary elements between the shared content and recipient interactions. These hotspots act as mediators that enable interaction without requiring direct manipulation of the entire screen share, simplifying the interaction model while enabling versatile engagement with specific content regions
2Productivity
If real-time interaction with shared content is enabled, then collaboration is enhanced, but synchronization complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements local quality by allowing interactions to occur locally at each recipient's device rather than requiring centralized synchronization. When a recipient interacts with a hotspot, the transformation is applied locally to their view without affecting others, enabling real-time collaboration without complex synchronization protocols
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies partial action by enabling interaction with only specific portions of the shared content through hotspots rather than requiring full-content synchronization. This selective approach allows collaboration on specific elements without the overhead of synchronizing entire documents or presentations across all participants
3Loss of information
If interactive transformations are allowed on shared content, then understanding is improved, but control over content integrity is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-defining hotspots and their associated transformations before the screen share begins. The presenter configures which regions are interactive and what transformations are available, ensuring content integrity is maintained while still allowing recipients to explore and understand content through predefined interactive options
Solution Approach 2:
Hotspots serve as intermediaries that mediate between the need for interaction and content integrity. They provide structured access points for transformation while maintaining control over what can be modified and how, preventing arbitrary alterations to the shared content while still enabling meaningful interactions for better understanding
Data Source
AI summary
According to this disclosure, an information exchange system is provided where once source content that a presenter chooses to display is received by all recipients, each recipient can use an input device (e.g., his or her mouse or keyboard) to hover or click on specific parts of the shared screen to interact and absorb information in ways that help them better understand what is being presented. The information exchange system comprises several components: an authoring (e.g., document creation) subsystem that allows the content creator to create and encode presentation-like content for certain data types to be sent along with the source video, a data channel connecting the source and destination endpoints and that transmits the encoded document content, and an application at the destination that decodes the content from the data channel and creates an overlay on the destination video that allows the recipient to interact with the decoded content and transform it into other formats as programmed by the content creator.