Social Proximity Indicators for Electronic Scheduling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional electronic scheduling applications lack the functionality to efficiently convey relevant meeting information, particularly in busy schedules with conflicting meetings, due to limitations in screen size and cognitive burden, and fail to provide easy-to-digest cues for meeting attendees and their social proximity.
Innovation Solution
The technology generates a social proximity score for meetings based on attendee information, using relational profiles to determine attendee proximity scores, which are combined to create a meeting proximity score, displayed as perceptible indicators within the scheduling application, facilitating organization, conflict resolution, and suggesting meeting attributes like time, date, and location.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If meeting details such as attendee names are included within calendar view, then information completeness is improved, but screen space utilization deteriorates and cognitive burden increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the most relevant meeting information (proximity indicators based on attendee relationships) and presents it in the calendar view, while leaving detailed attendee lists accessible through separate interfaces. This extraction principle allows the calendar to display essential cues without being overwhelmed by complete information, resolving the contradiction between information completeness and screen space utilization.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments meeting information into hierarchical levels: proximity indicators are displayed in the calendar view, while detailed attendee information is segmented into separate meeting details views. This segmentation allows the system to present different amounts of information at different interfaces, maintaining screen space efficiency while preserving access to complete information.
2Loss of information
If meeting details such as attendee names are included within calendar view, then information completeness is improved, but cognitive burden increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and highlights only the most cognitively relevant information (proximity indicators showing relationship strength) in the calendar view, removing the need to process complete attendee lists at a glance. This reduction to essential cues decreases cognitive burden while maintaining access to complete information when needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses color-coded proximity indicators to visually encode relationship strength, allowing users to quickly grasp meeting context without reading detailed attendee information. This visual encoding reduces cognitive processing requirements while preserving meaningful information differentiation.
3Loss of information
If conventional schedule applications display all meeting information, then information completeness is improved, but the ability to organize and manage busy schedules deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts key organizational cues (proximity indicators) from complete meeting information and uses them to enhance schedule organization. These indicators help users quickly identify meetings with different relationship contexts, enabling better organization of busy schedules without requiring display of all meeting details.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary analysis of attendee relationships and pre-computes proximity indicators before the user views the schedule. This preliminary action organizes information in advance, allowing users to immediately grasp schedule patterns without performing cognitive analysis during schedule review.
4Measurement precision
If proximity indicators are generated and displayed for all meetings, then scheduling decision quality is improved, but computational complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements partial computation of proximity indicators, focusing computational resources on calculating relationship metrics only for meetings that require scheduling decisions. Rather than computing exhaustive social network analyses for all possible meeting combinations, the system applies proximity calculation selectively, reducing computational complexity while maintaining measurement precision where needed.
Data Source
AI summary
Technology is disclosed for determining a social proximity of attendees of a meeting within an electronic schedule. Information within relational profiles for the attendees may be utilized to identify interaction patterns (e.g., how often attendees communicate, what mode of communication is used) and commonalities (e.g., common social media connections, common domains). This information may be utilized to determine a set of attendee proximity scores for groups of attendees, such as a pair of attendees. Based on the attendee proximity scores determined for the meeting, an overall meeting proximity score may be determined for the meeting. The meeting proximity score may be utilized to generate a proximity indicator for the meeting event that will form at least part of the graphic interface component for the meeting event. The meeting proximity score may alternatively or additionally be used to create meetings by determining meeting details and meeting conflict resolution.