Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Operations research or analysis
Reexamination Certificate
1998-08-07
2001-05-22
Trammell, James P. (Department: 2764)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Operations research or analysis
C705S007380, C706S052000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06236974
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates in general to a computer system for automatically selecting products for a user. More specifically, the invention relates to a computer system that will perform all of the selection and organization tasks involved with suggesting products to the user including menus for family meal planning.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In today's environment most families consist of either two working spouses or a single working parent. As a consequence, at least one parent must come home from a long day at work and tackle the decision of what to make for dinner. Since the parent usually gets home from work around dinner time, the children and other family members are usually already hungry and tired. This situation often puts much stress on family members, in particular, the parent tasked with determining what meal to prepare (the primary care providing parent). The primary care providing parent is often pressured to prepare something quickly. Under this pressure, the parent opts most of the time for something simple and quick—if they have all the ingredients that they need to prepare the meal. If the parent does not have all the ingredients, he or she must make a trip to the store or figure out what they can make out of the ingredients at home. As a consequence of this situation, the family's menu is unimaginative. The family will therefore typically end up eating the same food over and over again, or the family will eat food from the same outside vendor (take-out).
The above problems would not exist if a maid is hired to perform the meal preparation task described. However, only wealthy families can afford the luxury of a maid. The above problems would also not exist if the primary care providing parent does not work. The stay-home-parent could select a meal, buy the necessary ingredients, and have the food prepared by the time everyone else in the family returned home. This solution may also not be feasible if both spouses enjoy their work and neither one wants to give up his or her career. Furthermore, in many situations, it may not be economically feasible to have only one parent working.
It is therefore desirable to have a system that allows for automated meal selection and shopping. Although actually cooking the meal requires some amount of work, the process of selection and shopping may actually be more time consuming and stressful. The system would also help with the cooking chores by providing detailed cooking instructions to the user.
Just as a good maid or a stay-at-home parent, the system would learn and adapt to the family's food preferences, and make the meal selections accordingly. In addition, just as a maid or stay-at-home parent, the system would also track what meals the family has eaten in the past to avoid needless repetition.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention overcomes the problems with dual career families or single parent families by providing an automatic maid. The system performs all of the functions that are necessary for family meals except for the actual cooking and serving of the food which is the least complicated and time consuming part of the whole process.
An embodiment of the present invention provides a method for creating a user preference vector where the preference vector comprises a plurality of fields that represent specific user preferences. The method includes the steps of asking a predetermined question eliciting information about the user's preference for a product with a specific characteristic, and storing the user's response to the questions in a field in the preference vector corresponding to the specific characteristic.
The method of recommending a menu includes the steps of accessing a recipe for a menu, determining the suitability of the menu based on a comparison of characteristics of the recipe for the menu with user preferences obtained from the food preference vector, and recommending the menu to the user if the menu is found to be suitable.
Still other objects and advantages of the present invention will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description, wherein is shown and described only the preferred embodiment of the invention, simply by way of illustration of the best mode contemplated for carrying out the invention. As will be realized, the invention is capable of other and different embodiments, and its several details are capable of modifications in various obvious respects, all without departing from the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and description are to be regarded as illustrative in nature, and not as restrictive.
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Meals For You; The Best Recipe Site on the Web; http://www.mymenu.com/, 1996.*
An automated system for planning menus for the elederly in title VII nutrition programs, Unklesbay, N.; Unklesbay, K., Food Technology , 32 (8) 80-83, 1978.
Hicken Arthur Ray
Kolawa Adam K.
Christie Parker & Hale LLP
Parasoft Corporation
Retta Yehdega
Trammell James P.
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