Electronic Montage System Tile Object Generation

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing electronic montage systems face challenges in effectively aggregating and presenting diverse digital content from heterogeneous data sources in a way that provides meaningful information to users, especially as the amount of digital information increases, leading to difficulties in creating informative and user-friendly digital montages.

Innovation Solution

An electronic montage system that utilizes a logic device with a montage application, comprising an authoring component and a presentation component, to generate a customized digital montage by creating tile objects from content files based on specific type definitions, allowing users to easily identify and select content of interest for closer viewing, and publishes these montages through a publishing or messaging model.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Quantity of substance

If digital content from multiple data sources is aggregated into a montage, then information diversity and content richness are improved, but system complexity and difficulty in managing heterogeneous data sources increase

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvecontent richnessVSAvoidsystem complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Quantity of substanceVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces data source representations as intermediary objects that mediate between heterogeneous data sources and the montage system. These representations provide a unified interface for accessing and managing diverse content, allowing the system to handle multiple data sources without proportionally increasing complexity. The representations act as standardized adapters that translate different data source interfaces into a common format.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The system segments the montage into discrete tile objects, each associated with a specific data source representation. This segmentation allows independent management of individual content elements while maintaining overall montage coherence. Each tile object can be separately created, modified, and retrieved, reducing the complexity of managing the entire heterogeneous data aggregation as a single unit.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

2Ease of operation

If customized representations are created for each data source, then user ability to identify and select content of interest is improved, but time and effort required to create customized montages increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvecontent identificationVSAvoidmontage creation time
Core Design Contradiction:
Ease of operationVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary actions by automatically generating tile objects from data source representations and pre-organizing them according to type definitions. This preliminary processing creates ready-to-use montage structures that users can directly utilize or lightly customize, significantly reducing the time required to create informative montages while maintaining high content identification capability.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The montage system provides self-service functionality by automatically selecting and organizing content from data sources based on predefined type definitions and user specifications. The system autonomously creates tile objects and assembles montages without requiring manual intervention for each content element, thereby reducing creation time while preserving customized representation benefits.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #25Self-service

3Measurement precision

If tile objects are generated from content files based on type definitions, then information presentation precision and meaningfulness is improved, but processing time and computational resources increase

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveinformation precisionVSAvoidprocessing time
Core Design Contradiction:
Measurement precisionVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system changes parameters by using type definitions to control the level and nature of content extraction from data files. Type definitions specify precise parameters for tile object generation, such as which fields to extract, how to format them, and what transformations to apply. This parameter-based approach enables high information precision in tile objects while optimizing processing time by avoiding unnecessary extraction and transformation operations.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #35Parameter changes

Data Source

PatentUS10515139B2Techniques for electronic aggregation of information
Publication Date: 2019.12.24 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC
  • US10515139B2 patent drawing
  • US10515139B2 patent drawing
  • US10515139B2 patent drawing

AI summary

Techniques for an electronic montage system are described. An apparatus may comprise a logic device arranged to execute a montage application comprising an authoring component operative to provide a presentation surface having multiple presentation tiles, receive control directives to associate content files with presentation tiles, generate tile objects for the content files based on content file types for the content files, and store the presentation surface and tile objects as a montage. Other embodiments are described and claimed.