Voice Message Playback Prioritization on Shared Devices
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing messaging systems, particularly those using voice-activated devices, face challenges in organizing and prioritizing messages for users without visual interfaces, making it difficult to manage multiple accounts and provide a natural user experience, especially when multiple individuals use the same device.
Innovation Solution
Implementing speaker identification and temporal/grouping rules to prioritize messages based on the user's account, sender priority, and contextual information, allowing for natural voice interfaces to manage messages effectively, even on headless devices.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If visual display is used to show messages, then users can pick and choose which messages to consume, but voice-activated devices lack visual interfaces making message selection difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces visual display and manual selection mechanisms with voice-based interaction. Users speak natural language requests like 'play my messages' instead of visually scanning and selecting messages, substituting the mechanical visual-manual interface with acoustic-vocal interaction.
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically determines which messages to play based on speaker identification and contextual rules without requiring user selection. The messaging system serves itself by autonomously filtering and prioritizing messages according to predefined criteria tied to user accounts and senders.
2Adaptability or versatility
If multiple user accounts are supported on a shared device, then more users can access their messages, but determining which user is speaking becomes complex
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces speaker identification technology as an intermediary that automatically determines which user is speaking. This mediator translates the physical act of speaking into digital user identification, enabling the system to distinguish between multiple users without manual input or complex authentication procedures.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses acoustic feedback from the device environment (voice patterns, device proximity detection) to automatically identify the current speaker and associate their message requests with the appropriate user account, creating a closed-loop identification system.
3Reliability
If messages are played in chronological order, then all messages are delivered, but important messages may be buried among less important ones
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies different playback rules to different messages based on their characteristics. Messages from high-priority senders or containing urgent content are played with higher precedence, while routine messages are played afterward. This local differentiation of playback quality ensures important information is not lost among less critical messages.
Solution Approach 2:
The system pre-establishes prioritization rules and sender hierarchies before message playback occurs. By preliminarily categorizing messages according to importance criteria, the system ensures that when playback occurs, important messages are automatically positioned for earlier delivery without real-time analysis delays.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for providing message playback using a shared electronic device is described herein. In response to receiving a request to output messages, a speech-processing system may determine a group account associated with a requesting device, and may determine messages stored by a message data store for the group account. Speaker identification processing may also be performed to determine a speaker of the request. A user account associated with the speaker, and messages stored for the user account, may be determined. A summary response indicating the user account's messages and the group account's message may then be generated such that the user account messages are identified prior to the group account's messages. The messages may then be analyzed to determine an appropriate voice user interface for the requester such that the playback of the messages using a shared electronic device is more natural and conversational.