Statistical models and methods to support the personalization of applications and services via consideration of preference encodings of a community of users

摘要

A statistical methodology is employed for assisting people with the setting of parameters of software applications or services. With the method, information about demographics and/or about the complete or partial preferences of other people, are analyzed to infer recommendations for settings and functionality of a computer application or service. A system is reviewed with the ability to receive data regarding a plurality of users, and stores respective profiles for these users in a community store. The system can leverage off of these completed and/or partially completed profiles of parameters representing preferences about software operation in connection with building new profiles for users (new and/or existing). Data regarding a user that desires to build a new profile is employed in connection with the community profiles to facilitate the user building a personalized profile. Various statistical and/probabilistic schemes can be employed, for example, collaborative filtering techniques to identify to the user the top n settings by particular parameter(s), top m settings by popularity, top x most similar profiles to facilitate the user selecting most appropriate sub-profiles as part of a personalized profile building and selection effort.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
operating a computing device by:
displaying on a display of the computing device a graphical user interface, the graphical user interface comprising:
a first display object configured to display available states that are capable of being categorized among categories by a user to provide a state categorization, each of the categories corresponding to a respective cost of interruption for the available states that are included in the respective category,a second display object configured to display potential profiles, including respective subsets of the available states categorized among the categories based at least in part on preferences from users other than the user in a community of users, based at least in part on an extent to which categorization of the subsets among the categories in the potential profiles is similar to categorization of one or more of the available states among the categories in the state categorization, andat least one input object configured to receive user input specifying categorization of at least one of the available states among at least one of the categories;selecting a specified category, which is chosen by the user, from the categories to be associated with a specified available state, which is chosen by the user, based at least in part on the specified category being chosen by the user;adding the specified available state to the specified category, based at least in part on the specified available state being chosen by the user, in response to selecting the specified category from the categories to be associated with the specified available state;filtering a set of profiles derived from the community of users based at least in part on the user input to automatically modify the potential profiles displayed in the second display object; andconfiguring an application based at least in part on a selected profile of the filtered set of profiles.