Customer self service system for resource search and selection

Details Customer self service system for resource search and selection Customer self service system for resource search and selection

2001-02-07

2004-03-02

Alam, Shahid Al (Department: 2172)

Data processing: database and file management or data structures

Database design

Data structure types

C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06701311

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the fields of knowledge management systems, information portals, research, catalog search, search engines, and data miners, and particularly, to a comprehensive customer self service system for resource search and selection implementing novel graphical user interface and machine learning components.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Currently there exist many systems designed to perform search and retrieval functions. These systems may be classified variously as knowledge management systems, information portals, search engines, data miners, etc. However, providing effective customer self service systems for resource search and selection presents several significant challenges. The first challenge for current systems with query capability is that serving queries intelligently requires a large amount of user supplied contextual information, while at the same time the user has limited time, patience, ability and interest to provide it. The second challenge is that searching without sufficient context results in a very inefficient search (both user time and system resource intensive) with frequently disappointing results (overwhelming amount of information, high percentage of irrelevant information). The third challenge is that much of a user's actual use and satisfaction with search results differ from that defined at the start of the search: either because the users behave contrary to their own specifications, or because there are other contextual issues at play that have not been defined into the search.
While many search systems today use an iconic interface to capture the query, they do not incorporate a rich set of contextual attributes and, they do not incorporate the user's past interaction. The prior art has separately addressed the use of the history of interaction with the user or their current service environment to provide context for a resource search and selection system. The prior art also assumes the shallow context of a single user query stream focused on a single topic. A major limitation of these approaches is to continue to burden the user with providing substantial contextual information and inability of such systems to apply specific user context to improve resource selection for other users on the same subject. While some search systems today use an iconic interface to display the results of a search, they do not include ranking by sets of contextual decision criteria. Users are forced to select from returned resources on the basis of content alone and actually begin using the resources before they realize the resources are not appropriate in the user's complete context. While some search systems today may track a user's use of the system, they don't use that information to develop a better query interface over time and to better inform the search both real time and historically regarding this user, particularly in a predictive or directive fashion.
One consequence of these process and systems limitations is that the primary user will frequently turn to an intermediate person to provide them with the desired end-product, or to research and analyze the various resources that may be available to them. Generally speaking this human resource is not consistently accessible and/or available in the time, timeframe, and quantity desired. Generally speaking, this human resource comes at an additional cost (direct or indirect) in the process, creating an expensive solution to the user's need than a self service approach could provide.
It would be highly desirable to provide a customer self service system that entirely eliminates the need to utilize intermediate persons in some instances, or, at a minimum, is capable of assisting these intermediate persons to be more effective.
While the end user (or their selected intermediaries) may “search” a broad universe of resources, seeking the specific instances that will serve, there is another set of potential users who need to survey the same data, but for the converse rationale. Individuals and organizations who are developing and supplying the resources being queried, look at their “product” and want to know what resources may exist to compete with, complement, precede, follow, or obviate the need for their product, it's marketing or delivery channel. The limitations in the existing systems impact these individuals and organizations by reducing effectiveness and increasing cost of market research, market planning, strategic planning and implementation activities.
Some representative prior art database/resource search, retrieval and selection systems that requires some measure of interactivity and implements graphical or visual interfaces include those described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,303,361 entitled “Search and Retrieval System”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,524,187 entitled “Worlds-Within-Worlds Nested Display and Interaction System and Method”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,546,516 entitled “System and Method for Visually Querying a Data Set Exhibited in a Parallel Coordinate System”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,600,835 entitled “Adaptive Non-Literal Text String Retrieval”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,608,899 entitled “Method and Apparatus for Searching a Database by Interactively Modifying a Database Query”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,710,899 entitled “Interactive Selectors for Selecting Subsets of a Set of Values”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,768,578 entitled “User Interface for Information Retrieval System”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,841,437 entitled “Method and Apparatus for Interactive Database Queries via Movable Viewing Operation Regions”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,217 entitled “User Interface for a Financial Advisory System”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,930,501 entitled “Pictorial User Interface for Establishing Time of Day and Geographical or Environmental Context on a Computer Display or Other Monitor”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,974,412 entitled “Intelligent Query System for Automatically Indexing Information in a Database and Automatically Categorizing Users”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,999,927 entitled “Method and Apparatus for Information Access Employing Overlapping Clusters”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,787,422 entitled “Method and Apparatus for Information Access Employing Overlapping Clusters; U.S. Pat. No. 6,105,023 entitled “System and Method for Filtering a Document Stream”; and, an article by Susan Feldman entitled “The Answering Machine,” in Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals, 1, 8, January, 2000/58.
Representative prior art references addressing the issue of providing some element of context to search and retrieval systems includes U.S. Pat. No. 5,619,709 entitled “System and Method of Context Vector Generation and Retrieval”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,178 entitled “Visualization of Information Using Graphical Representations of Context Vector Based Relationships and Attributes”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,014,661 entitled “System and Method for Automatic Analysis of Data Bases and for User-Controlled Dynamic Querying”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,097,386 entitled “Data Processing System Having Context Sensitive Visual Feedback for User Interface Controls and Method Therefor”.
The prior art has additionally addressed the use of some of the features of the resources (content and other) in relation to the user's context and/or prior use of other resource search and selection systems, for selection of responses to current user's queries. Representative prior art approaches systems described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,567 entitled “System for Directing Relevance-Ranked Data Objects to Computer Users”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,754,939 entitled “System for Generation of User Profiles For a System For Customized Electronic Identification of Desirable Objects”; and, U.S. Pat. No. 5,321,833 entitled “Adaptive Ranking System for Information Retrieval”.
While the prior art has addressed the issues of database searching, dynamic query formulation, and the visual representation of multidimensional data, newer search engines are just beginning to use some of these ideas to express queries and results. There has heretofore never been an infor

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