Method of demonstrating a household appliance
AssigneeWhirlpool Corporation
InventorsMatthew P. Ebrom, Wallace J. Elston, III, Mark E. Glotzbach, Anthony E. Jenkins, Richard A. McCoy, Phillip A. Molloy
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of enabling adaptable demonstrations of a household appliance comprising providing consumer-specific updates to a demonstration software at a location remote from an appliance and downloading the consumer-specific updates to the appliance over an information network in response to a determined characteristic of the consumer or enabling a video conference over multimedia interface during the demonstration.
Claims18
A method of enabling adaptable demonstrations of a household appliance comprising:
- providing a household appliance including:
- a first component;
- a second component;
- a user interface with a multimedia display;
- a controller configured to perform a specific function that implements both the first and second components;
- a demonstration software which, when executed by the controller, causes a demonstration of the specific function by implementing the first component but not the second component and further causes a display of information related to the demonstration on the multimedia display;
- and
- wherein the household appliance is selected from a group consisting of:
- a clothes washing machine, a clothes dryer, an oven, a dishwasher, a refrigerator, a freezer, a microwave oven, a trash compactor, and a countertop appliance;
- determining a characteristic of a consumer within a predefined distance of the household appliance;
- downloading, to the household appliance, a consumer-specific update for the demonstration software from a remote database, wherein the consumer-specific update is selected based on the characteristic of the consumer;
- and
- executing, by the controller, the demonstration software and the consumer-specific update, wherein the demonstration software causes the demonstration of the specific function and the display of the information related to the demonstration and wherein the consumer-specific update causes the demonstration to be tailored to the consumer.
A method of enabling adaptable demonstrations of a household appliance comprising:
- providing a household appliance selected from a group consisting of:
- a clothes washing machine, a clothes dryer, an oven, a dishwasher, a refrigerator, a freezer, a microwave oven, a trash compactor and a countertop appliance, said household appliance including:
- a first component;
- a second component;
- a user interface including a multimedia display;
- a controller for controlling the first and second components, with the household appliance being configured to execute a specific function utilizing both the first component and the second component;
- and
- a demonstration software which, when executed by the controller, causes a demonstration of the specific function by implementing the first component but not the second component and further causes a display of information related to the demonstration on the multimedia display;
- determining a characteristic of a consumer for the household appliance;
- downloading, to the household appliance, a consumer-specific update for the demonstration software from a remote database, wherein the consumer-specific update is selected based on the characteristic of the consumer;
- executing, by the controller, the demonstration software and the consumer-specific update, wherein the demonstration software causes the demonstration of the specific function and the display of the information related to the demonstration and the consumer-specific update causes the demonstration to be tailored to the consumer;
- and establishing a video conference over the user interface between a consumer and a sales representative during the demonstration.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.