Transaction Cost Visualization via Relatable Product Quantities
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face difficulty in intuitively understanding monetary amounts or rates, making it challenging to assess the costs of transactions effectively.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method and system that determines a relatable cost value by classifying users based on consumer interest characteristics, matching them with relatable products, and presenting the cost value as a quantity of those products, allowing users to better understand transaction costs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If monetary amounts are presented in traditional numerical format, then transaction information is provided accurately, but user understanding of cost magnitude is difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces relatable products as intermediary objects to bridge the gap between raw monetary values and user perception. By expressing costs in terms of familiar products (e.g., 'cost of 2 large pizzas'), the system translates abstract numbers into concrete, relatable concepts that users can intuitively understand without losing accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameter representation from pure numerical monetary values to quantity-based representations using relatable products. This parameter transformation maintains the underlying cost accuracy while presenting information in a format that aligns with users' intuitive understanding of value and consumption.
2Ease of operation
If relatable products are used to represent costs, then user understanding of transaction costs improves, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-establishing a database of relatable products, their typical costs, and their relationship to monetary values. This pre-computed reference framework allows the system to quickly translate costs into relatable product quantities without requiring complex real-time calculations, thus managing system complexity while improving user understanding.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses copies of familiar product concepts to represent costs. Instead of requiring users to mentally calculate or visualize abstract monetary amounts, the system creates conceptual copies of relatable products (pizzas, movies, gas tanks) with known cost associations, allowing users to understand transaction costs through familiar mental models rather than complex numerical reasoning.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are disclosed for assisting users in assessing costs of transactions. For instance, method may include: determining a cost value of at least one transaction associated with a user; classifying the user into a category, based on consumer interest characteristics of the user and consumer interest characteristics associated with the category; determining a relatable product based on the consumer interest characteristics associated with the category, the relatable product being a product purchased by a plurality of persons classified in the category; determining a relatable cost value, the relatable cost value being a representation of the cost value of the at least one transaction using a quantity of the respective relatable product; and presenting the relatable cost value to the user.