Application relevance determination based on social context

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9781540-B2
Application number	US-201113177829-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 7, 2011
Priority date	Jul 7, 2011
Publication date	Oct 3, 2017
Grant date	Oct 3, 2017

Abstract

Systems, methods, devices, and computer program products are described for using context-aware recommendation techniques to facilitate content discovery on a mobile device platform. In particular, the context-aware recommendation techniques evaluate both a current device context and a social context to generate application relevance scores for each of a number of applications downloaded to a mobile device. Application representations on a graphical user interface (GUI) of the mobile device are rearranged, resized, and/or otherwise affected according to their respective application relevance scores. In certain configurations, one or more applications are pinned, thereby altering (e.g., reducing or eliminating) how changes in their respective application relevance scores affect display of their respective application representations on the GUI of the mobile device.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
determining, based on a dynamic characteristic of a mobile device of a user, a current device context value of at least one of a plurality of device context parameters;
receiving, at the mobile device and over a communications network, context information from each client device of a plurality of client devices, wherein each client device corresponds to a different social contact of a plurality of social contacts of the user, wherein the context information received from each client device comprises information relating to a social context of the client device of the social contact, wherein the information relating to the social context of the client device of the social contact relates to historical application usage information of a plurality of applications of the client device of the social contact;
determining, based on the context information received from each client device of the plurality of social contacts of the user, a current social context value of at least one of a plurality of social context parameters;
for each of a plurality of applications previously downloaded and stored on the mobile device, calculating, by the mobile device, an application relevance score as a function of the current device context value and the current social context value;
identifying at least one of the plurality of applications downloaded to the mobile device as a pinned application; and
dynamically updating a display of a plurality of application representations on a graphical user interface (GUI) of the mobile device, such that the application representations are arranged according at least to the application relevance scores, each application representation corresponding to one of the plurality of applications downloaded to the mobile device, the arranging comprising removing at least one application representation of the plurality of application representations according to a frequency of use of each of the plurality of application representations, reordering one or more application representations of the plurality of application representations according to the frequency of use of each such application representation, and listing an application representation corresponding to a most recently used application of the plurality of applications downloaded to the mobile device in a user-designated location of the GUI for the most recently used application, wherein the arrangement of the application representation of the pinned application is fixed and is not affected by changes in the application relevance scores.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein calculating the application relevance score comprises calculating a weighted combination of at least the current device context value and the current social context value for each of the plurality of applications downloaded to the mobile device.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the current device context value comprises determining the current device context value based on substantially real-time data received from a sensor integrated with the mobile device.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one device context parameter relates to at least one of:
current geographical location of the mobile device;
current network usage;
current application usage; or
current time.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one device context parameter relates to at least one of:
current geographical location of the mobile device in relation to a past geographical location of the mobile device; or
current application usage in relation to past application usage.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the current social context value comprises determining the current social context value based on at least one of:
an entry in a calendar application associated with the user; or
contact history.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the context information client device of the social contact relates to a geographic location of the client device of the social contact in relation to a geographic location of the mobile device.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein dynamically updating the display of the plurality of application representations on the GUI of the mobile device comprises reordering at least some of the application representations.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein dynamically updating the display of the plurality of application representations on the GUI of the mobile device comprises resizing at least some of the application representations.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein:
the method further comprises displaying the GUI on a primary screen and at least one secondary screen; and
dynamically updating the display of the plurality of application representations on the GUI comprises:
determining a subset of the plurality of applications downloaded to the mobile device that have highest application relevance scores; and
arranging the application representations according at least to the application relevance scores by displaying the application representations corresponding to the subset of applications on the primary screen of the GUI.

11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
automatically executing at least one of the plurality of applications stored on the mobile device based on the calculated application relevance scores.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein at least one application representation is an icon representing the corresponding application.

13. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining a predicted future context based on the current device context value and the current social context value;
associating at least one of the plurality of applications downloaded to the mobile device with a template associated with the predicted future context; and
dynamically updating the display of the plurality of application representations on the GUI according to the template associated with the predicted future context.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein the context information client device of the social contact relates to calendar entries of the social contact.

15. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining a proximity of the mobile device to the client device of a social contact; and wherein calculating the application relevance score as a function of the current device context value and the current social context value further comprises calculating the application relevance score based at least in part on the proximity of the mobile device to the client device of the social contact.

16. A system comprising:
a display;
a memory configured to store a plurality of application representations, each corresponding to one of a plurality of applications downloaded to a mobile device of a user; and
a processor communicatively coupled to the memory and the display, the processor being configured to implement a plurality of engines, the engines comprising:
a device context determination engine configured to determine, based on a dynamic characteristic of the mobile device of the user, a current device context value of at least one of a plurality of device context parameters;
a social context determination engine configured to receive, over a communications network, context information from each client device of a plurality of client devices, wherein each client device corresponds to a different social contact of a plurality of social contacts of the user, wherein the context information received from each client device comprises information relating to a social context of the client device of the social contact, wherein the information r

Assignees

• Jagannathan Padmapriya
• Iwasaki Jill S
• Aggarwal Pooja
• King Bennett M
• Shah Devarshi P
• Ruuspakka Roger M
• Qualcomm Inc

Inventors

• Jagannathan Padmapriya
• Iwasaki Jill S
• Aggarwal Pooja
• King Bennett M
• Shah Devarshi P
• Ruuspakka Roger M

Classifications

• G06Q10/40

  Business processes related to social networking or social networking services · CPC title

• G06Q50/01

  Physics · mapped topic

• H04M1/72586

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04W4/028

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04M1/72525

  Electricity · mapped topic