US 5,216,603 AGranted

Method and apparatus for structuring and managing human communications by explicitly defining the types of communications permitted between participants

AssigneeAction Technologies, Inc.

InventorsCarlos F. Flores, Juan J. Ludlow, Chauncey F. Bell, III, Raul M. Mora, Terry A. Winograd, Michael J. Graves

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Abstract

A method for managing business, social, and/or personal communications utilizing a programmed computer system including certain defining steps. All communications between a set of participants are defined as moves in conversations for declaring specific realizable possibilities or as moves in conversations for producing actions to complete specific possibilities. These conversations are defined as taking place within a set of declared or understood domains of possibilities. A set of conversational roles played by participants in the conversations is defined. Each participant plays at least one conversational role in any conversation. A set of types of incompletions which occur recurringly within the conversations is also defined. A set of types of permitted moves in conversations is defined on the basis of the defined incompletions, the defined roles, and the specific types of incompletions produced by the permitted moves. For each of the types of moves a set of associated data is defined. A conversation record format for the conversations is defined relative to a data base to be created and maintained for the conversations. The method also includes establishing a conversation management program for enabling interactive computer-controlled management of each of a plurality of the conversations of the participants. The program also includes facilities for use of each participant to review new moves by other participants in all conversations in which the participant plays a conversational role.

A computer system which implements a method for assisting users of the computer system to manage at least one of their business, social and personal communications, wherein said computer system includes for each of said users a corresponding input and output interface, processor, memory, and storage device, said method comprising the steps of:

a) creating at least one conversation type record structure for at least one conversation, said at least one conversation having a plurality of states, said conversation type record structure for defining a type of conversation, an identification of each of said users who are to participate in said conversation, a role to be assigned to each of said participating users, the state of the conversation, and a specification of conversational moves permitted for said role at each state of the conversation;
b) creating at least one conversation instance record for a first one of said participating users and for at least one other of said participating users based upon data entered by the first user using said corresponding user input and output interface and the at least one conversation type record structure, wherein each of said at least one other participating users is assigned a predetermined one of said roles defined in said at least one conversation type record structure, storing said entered data in said corresponding conversation instance record for said first user and making said corresponding conversation instance record available to each of said at least one other participating users;
c) updating the corresponding conversation instance record for said participating users based upon data entered by each of said participating users using said corresponding input and output interface, wherein the data which is permitted to be entered by each of said participating users is determined by the user's assigned role and the state of the conversation when said data is being entered.

Abstract

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