Manifest-Based Content Stacks for Interactive Navigation

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Solution Overview

Problem

Electronic content distribution fails to provide easy-navigable, packaged content for users, as digital formats often separate assets, making navigation cumbersome, and static reproductions of paper-based content neglect interactivity and electronic capabilities.

Innovation Solution

A method of presenting packaged content using a manifest that identifies logically related assets, allowing navigation and interaction within a content consumption environment, enabling users to navigate and utilize assets as specified by the manifest, which can include metadata for enhanced presentation and navigation features.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Ease of manufacture

If electronic content is provided as separate digital files or web pages, then distribution and storage are simplified, but navigation and user experience become cumbersome

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedistribution simplicityVSAvoidnavigation ease

Core Design Contradiction:

Ease of manufactureVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The content is divided into discrete assets (images, videos, text) that are individually addressable through the manifest, allowing selective loading and navigation while maintaining organized structure for efficient user access

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

A manifest layer is introduced as a metadata dimension that sits between the raw assets and the user interface, providing navigation structure, relationships, and context without adding physical complexity to the asset storage

Inventive Principle:

Principle #17Another dimension (Dimensionality change)

2Ease of manufacture

If paper-based content is scanned and provided as static documents, then reproduction is simple, but interactivity and electronic capabilities are lost

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvereproduction simplicityVSAvoidinteractivity capability

Core Design Contradiction:

Ease of manufactureVSAdaptability or versatility

Solution Approach 1:

The manifest structure serves multiple functions simultaneously: it acts as a catalog, navigation guide, relationship map, and presentation controller, enabling the same content package to adapt to different devices, formats, and interaction modes

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

Solution Approach 2:

The content package transitions from static scanned images to dynamic, reconfigurable content where assets can be loaded, unloaded, and presented in different sequences and formats based on user needs and device capabilities

Inventive Principle:

Principle #15Dynamics

3Stability of the object's composition

If content assets are concatenated in a single sequence, then structure is maintained, but navigation speed and flexibility are reduced

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecontent structureVSAvoidnavigation speed

Core Design Contradiction:

Stability of the object's compositionVSSpeed

Solution Approach 1:

Assets are segmented into independently addressable units with individual identifiers in the manifest, allowing direct access to any asset without sequential navigation through all preceding content, dramatically improving access speed

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The manifest acts as an intermediary index layer that maps user navigation requests directly to asset locations, eliminating the need to traverse through concatenated content and enabling immediate asset retrieval

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Data Source

PatentUS9684635B2Packaging, distributing, presenting, and using multi-asset electronic content

Publication Date: 2017.06.20 ADOBE INC

AI summary

One exemplary embodiment involves receiving, at a computer device, packaged content, wherein the packaged content comprises a manifest and assets. The exemplary method further comprises presenting, via a processor of the computer device, the packaged content in a content consumption environment based at least in part upon the manifest, wherein the manifest identifies stacks, each stack comprising one or more of the assets that are logically related to one another, wherein navigation amongst and within the stacks is specified by the manifest.