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

US5216603A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Action Technologies Ltd · US

Inventors

• Carlos F. Flores · Berkeley, US
• Juan J. Ludlow · Guanajuato, MX
• Chauncey F. Bell, III · San Rafael, US
• Raul Mora · Fort Lauderdale, US
• Terry A. Winograd · Stanford, US
• Michael J. Graves · Sunnyvale, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Oct 17, 1990
• Grant date: Jun 1, 1993
• Expiry date: Oct 17, 2010

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06Q10/10
• WIPO field: IT methods for management
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

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 mana…