Methods for display, notification, and interaction with prioritized messages

Abstract

Prioritization of document, such as email messages, is disclosed. In one embodiment, a computer-implemented method first receives a document. The method generates a priority of the document, based on a document classifier such as a Bayesian classifier or a support-vector machine classifier. The method then outputs the priority. In one embodiment, the method includes alerting the user based on an expected loss of now-review of the document as compared to an expected cost of alerting the user of the document, at a current time. Several methods are reviewed for display and interaction that leverage the assignment of priorities to documents, including a means for guiding visual and auditory actions by priority of incoming messages. Other aspects of the machinery include a special viewer that allows users to scope a list of email sorted by priority so that it can include varying histories of time, to annotate a list of messages with color or icons based on the automatically assigned priority, to harness the priority to control the level of detail provided in a summarization of a document, and to use a priority threshold to invoke an interaction context that lasts for some period of time that can be dictated by the priority of the incoming message.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.