JP2758484B2 - Combination selection method of appearance and function in information processing equipment - Google Patents

Description

The present invention relates to a method of selecting a combination of appearance and function in an information processing apparatus having a plurality of appearances and a plurality of functions.

[Prior Art] Information processing apparatuses usually have a database function, a word processor function, a graphic editor function for drawing graphics,
A plurality of functions such as a communication function are provided.

On the other hand, in an information processing device, it is necessary to present information to a user by a display device, and it is desired that both the method of presenting information and the operability are familiar to the user. Proposed. For example, in a personal computer or the like, a desktop metaphor that makes a computer look like a desk by displaying a state on a desk on a display screen is employed. No. 1-222497 has just proposed a television metaphor for displaying a picture of a television on a display screen.

As described above, various appearances, which are forms of presenting information to the user, are also known. In general, an information processing apparatus has a plurality of appearances, and switches metaphors according to a task of a user to present an appropriate metaphor environment. It has been made possible.

[Problem to be Solved by the Invention] In the conventional information processing apparatus, one appearance is previously associated with one function. For example, an icon 30 for making a paper image as shown in FIG. 6A is associated with a word processor, and when the icon 30 is designated, the display screen 31 is displayed as 32 as shown in FIG. A metaphor environment is presented with the appearance of the document as shown, where the document can be created.

However, in the conventional information processing apparatus, since the correspondence between the appearance and the function is fixedly set to one-to-one in advance, the following problem occurs. That is, the information processing apparatus is still provided with many functions and is expected to continue to increase in the future. However, if the appearance and the function are fixedly associated with each other on a one-to-one basis, Has to memorize and identify what functions all appearances correspond to, which is very troublesome.

Conventionally, each appearance and each function are managed by name, and corresponding appearances and functions have to be named according to certain promises, but the names and names are related in some way. If the appearance and function that are previously associated are given names that contradict the above promise, a state occurs in which the appearance is visible but the function does not operate, and the operation of the computer becomes difficult. This can be confusing for unfamiliar users.

Further, in a conventional information processing apparatus, a certain appearance and a certain function are fixedly associated with each other, but the correspondence may not always be familiar to the user. For example, the appearance of FIG. 6 (a) and the function of a word processor are easily understood by many users and are familiar, but the function of a word processor corresponds to the appearance as shown in FIG. 6 (c). Many users will not be confused if they do. This is because the image that the designer who associates with a certain appearance is different from the image that the user imagines when seeing a certain appearance, but it is impossible to completely eliminate this Therefore, it is not only a very difficult problem to design what kind of appearance to correspond to a certain function, but also the result of association is not always familiar to the user.
As a result, a problem has been pointed out that the user is inconvenient to use and hinders the user from trying to understand the computer.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problem, and has as its object to provide a method of selecting a combination of an appearance and a function in an information processing apparatus capable of automatically selecting a combination of an appearance and a function familiar to a user. Things.

[Means for Solving the Problems] In order to achieve the above object, a combination selection method of appearance and function in an information processing apparatus of the present invention is described in an interactive information processing apparatus having an appearance group and a function group independently. Appearance attribute list for each appearance, function attribute list for each function, and similarity calculation for selecting a function or appearance with the highest similarity to the indicated appearance or function by referring to the appearance attribute list and the function attribute list And a control unit for associating the appearance or function designated in advance with the function or appearance selected by the similarity calculation unit.

[Operations and Effects of the Invention] In the present invention, when an appearance or function is specified first, the similarity calculation unit refers to the appearance attribute list and the function attribute list to determine the appearance or function specified first. A function or appearance having a high degree of similarity is automatically selected, and the appearance and the function are associated with each other by the control unit.

Therefore, even when the appearance and the function are created independently, it is possible to realize the association between the appearance and the function that is easy for the user to memorize.

In addition, even if a new function is added, the user can use it with a familiar appearance, so that the burden on the user can be reduced.

Further, in the present invention, since the appearance and the function are not managed by the name but by the attribute, even if the name of the appearance or the function is changed, the combination of the appearance and the function having the highest similarity is selected. Things.

Further, since the attribute value of the appearance and the attribute value of the function can be arbitrarily rewritten, the user can correct the attribute value when the correspondence between the appearance and the function does not meet the user's intention.

[Example] Hereinafter, an example will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of a method for selecting a combination of appearance and function in an information processing apparatus according to the present invention;
1 is an input / output device, 2 is a function group, 3 is an appearance group, 4 is a function attribute list, 5 is an appearance attribute list, 6 is a similarity calculation unit, 7
Indicates control means.

In the configuration shown in FIG. 1, the input / output device 1 serves as an interface between a user and a computer system, and is composed of input devices such as a keyboard and a pointing device and output devices such as a CRT display and a printer.

The function group 2 is a general term for a plurality of functions, and is a set of various functions such as a word processor function, a graphic editor function, various database functions, and a communication function.

The appearance group 3 is a general term for a plurality of appearances, and is a set of various appearances such as a desktop metaphor and a television metaphor. The appearance group 3 is independent of the function group 2.

The function attribute list 4 is a table in which an attribute value set of each attribute is written for each function as shown in FIG. FIG. 2 (b) is a diagram showing a specific example of a function attribute list. The four types of functions of text database registration, text database search, moving image database registration, and moving image database search are information processing types and information types, respectively. An example of an attribute value set when considering two attributes called types is shown. According to this, the text database registration function is characterized in that, with respect to the attribute of the type of information processing, the characteristics of generation, search, and communication are 0%, and the characteristics of accumulation are 100%. Regarding the attribute of the type of information, both visual characteristics and auditory characteristics are characterized as 50%. This has the characteristic that the function of text database registration cannot perform information generation, information search and information communication, but can only accumulate information from the viewpoint of the type of information processing. In addition, from the viewpoint of the type of information, it means that visual information and auditory information can be handled similarly. The same applies to other functions.

The appearance attribute list 5 is a table in which an attribute value set of each attribute is written for each appearance as shown in FIG. FIG. 3 (b) is a diagram showing a specific example of the appearance attribute list. For the six appearances of VTR, telephone, newspaper, magazine, television, and radio, two attributes, ie, information processing type and information type, are respectively added. An example of an attribute value set when considering is shown. According to this, the appearance of a newspaper is characterized in that, regarding the attribute of the type of information processing, the characteristics of generation and communication are 0%, the characteristics of storage are 20%, and the characteristics of search are 80%. In addition, regarding the attribute of the type of information, it is characterized that the visual characteristic is 100% and the auditory characteristic is 0%. This is because newspapers generally do not directly produce information and do not communicate information, but have the characteristic of searching for articles, and by further writing information, From the viewpoint of the type of information processing, the characteristics of information generation and information communication are 0%, and the ratio of information storage and retrieval is approximately 2: 8 from the viewpoint of the type of information processing. Is set. Further, information that can be handled in newspapers is visual information, not visual information. Therefore, from the viewpoint of the type of information, the visual characteristics are set to 100% and the auditory characteristics are set to 0%. The same applies to other appearances.

The number N ₂ of appearance may be the same or different from the number N ₁ of function, as is apparent from the later, the number M of the attributes set for both should be the same.

The attribute values written in the function attribute list as shown in FIG. 2 (b) and the appearance attribute list as shown in FIG. 3 (b) can be arbitrarily modified by the user. For example, a user who determines that the ratio of newspaper appearance accumulation to search is 3: 7 can modify the attribute value of the accumulation item to 30% and the attribute value of the retrieval item to 70%. This makes it possible to achieve a combination of functions and appearance according to the intention of each user.

The similarity calculator 6 calculates the similarity between the appearance and the function,
The combination of the appearance and the function having the highest similarity is selected, and the attribute value of the i-th item of the attribute m of the appearance x is set to A (x,
m, i), the attribute value of the i-th item of the attribute m of the function y is F
When (y, m, i), the similarity between appearance x and function y is calculated by the following equation (1).

However, It is.

Specifically, it is as follows. Now, the function y is a moving image database search and the appearance x is a television.
Assume that it has the attribute values shown in FIG. 3B and FIG. 3B. At this time, m = 1 means the type of information processing, and m = 1
= 2 means the type of information. When m = 1, i
= 1,2,3,4 means generation, accumulation, search, and communication, respectively, and when m = 2, i = 1,2 means sight and hearing, respectively. Therefore, if calculated by equation (1), the similarity between the television appearance and the moving image database search function is 200.

The function and appearance similarity are calculated as described above.
When a function to be used first is specified, the similarity calculation unit 6 calculates the similarity between the specified function and all appearances. Then, the similarity calculation unit 6 determines the appearance having the maximum similarity as the best combination with the function Y, and notifies the control unit 7.

The control means 7 controls the entire information processing apparatus.

Next, the operation of the configuration shown in FIG. 1 will be described. First, the user specifies a function or appearance to be used by the input / output device 1. Now, assuming that a certain function Y is designated, the control means 7 starts the similarity calculation section 6. Thereby, the similarity calculation unit 6 takes in the attribute value set of each attribute related to the function Y from the function attribute list 4, and further,
The attribute value set of each attribute related to all appearances is fetched from the appearance attribute list 5, and the similarity between function Y and all appearances is calculated as described above, and the appearance having the highest similarity to function Y is selected. Specifically, it is as follows. Now, assume that a text database search is specified as a function first. At this time, the similarity calculation unit 6 sets the function attribute list 4
, The attribute value set relating to the text database search shown in FIG. 2 (b) is fetched, and further, the attribute value set relating to all appearances shown in FIG. , VTR,
The similarity with each appearance of telephone, newspaper, magazine, television and radio is calculated by equation (1). The calculation result is as shown in FIG. 4 (a). The similarity calculation unit 6 determines that the combination with the television appearance having the maximum similarity is the best, and notifies the control unit 7 of the combination. Thereby, the control means 7 selects the text database search function from the function group 2 and selects and associates the appearance of the television from the appearance group 3. As a result, the picture of the television as shown in FIG. 5 is displayed on the screen of the display device of the input / output device 1, and the text database search function operates.

Further, when the text database registration function is designated, the similarity with each appearance is as shown in FIG. 4 (b).
VTR will be selected.

In the above description, the function is specified first. Even when the appearance is specified, the function having the highest similarity is selected in the same manner.

As described above, the best combination of function and appearance can be obtained.

As described above, one embodiment of the present invention has been described. Next, another embodiment will be described. This embodiment has the same configuration as that of FIG. 1, but differs from the above-described embodiment in the similarity calculation performed by the similarity calculator 6. That is, a weight is assigned to each attribute of attribute 1, attribute 2,. Is set, and the similarity is calculated by the following equation (4).

That is, for example, when there are two attributes, ie, the type of information processing and the type of information, it is different depending on the user whether to judge them to be the same or to place importance on one of them, so the weight W (m) By adopting such a parameter, it is possible to reflect the user's preference for the attribute.

Although the embodiments of the present invention have been described above, the present invention is not limited to the above embodiments, and it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications are possible.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of a method of selecting a combination of appearance and function in an information processing apparatus according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining a function attribute list, FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining an appearance attribute list, FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining an example of similarity calculation, FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of a television appearance, and FIG. It is a figure for explaining a problem. 1 ... I / O device, 2 ... Function group, 3 ... Appearance group, 4 ...
... Function attribute list, 5 ... Appearance attribute list, 6 ... Similarity calculation unit, 7 ... Control means.

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] An interactive information processing apparatus having an appearance group and a function group independently has a plurality of attributes, each of which is composed of a set of a plurality of attribute values, and each of the attribute values has a characteristic of the appearance. It consists of an appearance attribute list including a description of the size and a set of a plurality of attribute values, and each attribute value refers to the function attribute list including a description of the size of the characteristic possessed by the function, and the appearance attribute list and the function attribute list. A similarity calculation unit that selects a function or appearance having a high degree of similarity to the appearance or function specified by the instruction, and a control that associates the previously specified appearance or function with the function or appearance selected by the similarity calculation unit. Means for selecting a combination of appearance and function in an information processing apparatus.