WO2014174296A1

WO2014174296A1 - Method, product and device for digital media

Info

Publication number: WO2014174296A1
Application number: PCT/GB2014/051275
Authority: WO
Inventors: Rebecca DALY; Bruce Jon FIELDING
Original assignee: Quiet Explosion Limited
Priority date: 2013-04-25
Filing date: 2014-04-24
Publication date: 2014-10-30

Abstract

There is provided a computer implemented method for improving user interaction during the download time for digital media, comprising: identifying that a sender has selected the digital media for sending to a recipient's client device;identifying that the digital media has commenced downloading from a server; and using a wrapper to provide a distraction on the recipient's client device at least during part of the download time of the digital media.

Description

METHOD, PRODUCT AND DEVICE FOR DIGITAL MEDIA

The present invention relates to digital media, for example, applications of software for personal electronic devices such as smart phones, tablet computers, other mobile devices, smart TVs and game consoles. In particular, it relates to methods of providing data, software or applications such that the recipient of the gifted application has an improved user interaction during the downloading experience.

It has become increasingly popular for owners of smart phones and computer tablets to use mobile applications, which are typically downloaded from application distribution platforms or application stores (such as the Apple App Store ®, Google Play ®, Blackberry World ® and Wndows Phone Store ®) that are provided by mobile operating systems (such as the Apple iOS ®, Google Android ®, Blackberry OS ® and Wndows Phone ®). These mobile applications may be downloaded for free or in exchange for a payment.

When a user downloads a mobile application from an application distribution platform or application store, he/she typically must wait whilst the application downloads. Although an indication may be provided to the user giving information relating to the progress of the download, there is usually no or limited interaction involved for the user, and thus the downloading experience is not exciting for the user. Further, this problem is exacerbated in the event that the user is downloading multiple applications.

Aside from downloading mobile applications on mobile devices for oneself, it is also known to gift online mobile applications to other users. For example, mobile devices that operate using iOS 5 ® allow users to send Apple ® mobile applications to other iOS5 ® users. Firstly, the sender selects the mobile application that he/she wishes to gift from the App Store ®. Then, the sender fills out the details of both the sender and the recipient, including the e-mail addresses of the sender and the recipient, a reference for the sender and an optional message from the sender to the recipient. There is also the option to gift the application up to ninety days in the future. The sender then chooses a theme in which to decorate the application before proceeding to payment. However, when the recipient receives notification of the delivery of the gifted application from the sender, he/she must subsequently wait whilst the application or applications are downloading, and so the problems associated with downloading an application or multiple applications are equally prominent in the situation of gifting mobile applications as well as downloading mobile applications for oneself.

In another example of a known method to gift mobile applications online, a sender may use the Amazon Appstore ® to directly gift an Android ® application to a recipient using the "Gift Card ®" feature. Upon payment for the application by the sender, the recipient will subsequently receive a code in order to redeem the mobile application. However, this process is often cumbersome and involves multiple steps which, for a recipient who is unfamiliar with the technology of mobile applications and navigating around application distribution platforms or application stores, impose unnecessary complications upon the user. Further, as outlined above, the recipient of the application must then wait whilst the application is downloading.

Despite the known methods of downloading and gifting mobile applications, there is currently no satisfactory personalised interaction for the user. Indeed, the combination of the delay to the recipient of one or more mobile applications arising from the time it takes for the application(s) to download and the complexity of the process for downloading applications may actively discourage some users from downloading said applications. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide means for improving user interaction during the download of mobile applications that remedy the mundane download procedure as well as the complexity of the process.

According to the present invention, there is provided a computer implemented method for improving user interaction during the download time for digital media, comprising: identifying that a sender has selected the digital media for sending to a recipient's client device; identifying that the digital media has commenced downloading from a server; and using a wrapper to provide a distraction on the recipient's client device at least during part of the download time of the digital media.

The present invention improves user interaction during the download of digital media by offering a distraction during the download time. This distraction may be contained within a wrapper. The term "wrapper" refers to software which is separate to the digital media for downloading. The wrapper may originate from software which is already downloaded on the client device, the server from which the digital media is downloaded or a separate server to that which the digital media is downloaded from. The wrapper may preferably be personalised with, for example, one or more of interactive wrapping paper, photo(s), gift tag message(s), video message(s) a mini story, song(s), or a personalised mini game. From a user interaction viewpoint, the digital media downloads in the background whilst the user interacts with the wrapper, and then the digital media install event is only launched and appears to the user once the download and the wrapper interactions have finished.

In preferred embodiments, the client devices may be mobile or smart phones. Further, in preferred embodiments, the digital media comprises one or more applications and in particularly preferred embodiments, the digital media comprises one or more mobile applications. Further, in preferred embodiments, the server may be a digital media store and in particularly preferred embodiments, the server may be an application distribution platform or an application store. Further, it will be appreciated that the term "user" may refer to senders and/or recipients of the digital media, applications or mobile applications.

Preferably, the wrapper may comprise pieces of source code that create a user interface for user interaction. This user interaction is provided on the recipient's client device.

Preferably, the method further comprises assigning a wrapper identification to the recipient of the digital media and using the wrapper identification to create the wrapper. After the sender has chosen and selected the desired digital media, a wrapper identification is assigned to the recipient, which may be based upon the recipient's personal details and/or the selection of the digital media. This advantageously creates a further level of personalisation to the method. Preferably, the method further comprises downloading the wrapper to the recipient's client device and identifying that the wrapper has finished downloading from the server. This advantageously gives indication of when the wrapper comprising the distraction should be initiated.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the sender and the recipient are the same user who operates a single client device.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the sender and the recipient are different users, and wherein the sender operates a first client device and the recipient operates a second client device. It will be appreciated that while there may be a single recipient operating a second client device for receiving digital media, there may also be a plurality of recipients operating a plurality of client devices for receiving digital media.

Preferably, in the embodiment where the sender and recipient are different users, the distraction may comprise a degree of user interaction between the sender and the recipient. For example, the sender and the recipient may partake in a "duet" distraction, whereby the sender records his/her input before sending the digital media and the recipient records his/her input during the download of the digital media. Advantageously, this adds a further degree of personalisation to the distraction and thus to the user interaction experience. Preferably, the server and the client device(s) communicate over any appropriate communications network, including Local Area Networks (LANs), Wide Area Networks (WANs) etc. More preferably, the server and the client device(s) communicate over the Internet.

Preferably, the distraction comprises user interaction for which the user input method is motion sensitive or gestural. For example, the distraction may comprise interactive wrapper paper that the user may interact with by swiping his/her finger across a touchscreen of the device to which the digital media is downloading. This type of interaction is advantageously intuitive to the user and therefore makes the interaction experience easy and enjoyable. In some preferable embodiments of the present invention, the total time for which the distraction is provided may match the total download time of the digital media. The download time of the digital media may be calculated, for example, by dividing the total size of the digital media by the bandwidth of the communication network, for example, the Internet connection. Subsequently, the distraction method of the present invention is tailored to the calculated distraction time. One advantage of matching the download time of the digital media and the total distraction time is that the recipient is neither waiting for the digital media to download without a distraction, nor being distracted for an amount of time that is greater than the time it takes for the digital media to download. Thus, user satisfaction is optimised.

In other preferable embodiments of the present invention, the total time for which the distraction is provided may be longer than the total download time of the digital media. After the wrapper of the digital media is launched, it regularly checks the download progress of the digital media. If the wrapper distraction is calculated to be longer than the download time, then the distraction is provided to the user. If, however, the wrapper distraction is calculated to be shorter than the download time, then the wrapper may extend the original distraction, calls for an additional distraction, load an external distraction (for example, trending content from an external site), or a combination of these. This process may repeat until the digital media is detected to have finished downloading.

In preferred embodiments, the wrapper may further comprise an advertisement and/or Internet content. Preferably, the advertisement and/or Internet content is selected based upon a wrapper identification. The matching process may be based on information derived from a user's previous purchases, a user's view history on the server, details that they entered to sign-up to the server (for example, age or gender) etc. This allows targeted advertising and other content to be delivered to individual users. According to the present invention, there is also provided a computer program product comprising computer executable instructions for implementing the method as described above. According to the present invention, there is also provided an electronic client device comprising a processor and a memory, the memory containing computer executable instructions for implementing the method as described above.

Preferred embodiments of the present invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

Figure 1 shows a system for the delivery of mobile applications to client device;

Figure 2 shows the operation of the system of Figures 1 during an exemplary delivery of a mobile application to a client device; Figure 3 shows a method by which the distraction of a wrapper of the present invention is provided; and

Figure 4 shows the software architecture of a mobile application of the present invention.

Figure 1 illustrates a system 1 for the delivery of mobile applications that may be used in accordance with the present invention. In Figure 1 , the system 1 comprises an application distribution platform 20, a first client device 30 and a second client device 40. Figure 1 also indicates communication channels between the abovementioned features. These communications may take place over any type of appropriate communications network 10, including local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), and the like, but in a preferred embodiment of the present invention, each of the application distribution platform 20, the first client device 30 and the second client device 40 are connected to the Internet, which is used to carry out communication between these features. The client devices 30, 40 may be implemented as any network enabled device. For example, the client devices 30, 40 may be implemented as a personal computer or laptop computer, or more preferably, as a mobile device such as a computer tablet, smartphone, or the like. In preferred embodiments, the client device is an Internet enabled device, although the skilled person will appreciate that alternative methods for delivering mobile applications to the client device may be employed.

It will be appreciated that the principle of operation of the invention may be applied to the delivery of a mobile application wherein a single client device is involved. In other words, the sender of the mobile application is also the recipient. It will also be appreciated that multiple mobile applications may be downloaded at one time/event.

The mobile application itself may be a piece of operating software, media content or similar. The operation of this embodiment of the present invention will now be described with reference to Figure 2, which shows the activities of each of the participants illustrated in Figure 1 during delivery of a mobile application to the second client device 40.

The software architecture of the application distribution platform 20 may be broadly considered to comprise four components within a pipeline construct: an "identifier" component whereby user information is collated, a "wrapper" component whereby a wrapper framework is created, a "delivery" component whereby the mobile application is delivered to the recipient, and a "receipt" component, whereby the recipient of the mobile application may send feedback to the sender of the mobile application.

Looking specifically at Figure 2, at step s1 , the sender of the mobile application initialises and logs in to the application distribution platform 20 via application gift management application associated with the application distribution platform 20 on the first client device 30. Alternatively, the sender may log in to application distribution platform 20 via its corresponding website. At step s2, the first client device 30 sends a request to the application distribution platform 20 for information regarding at least the available mobile applications and the application distribution platform 20 returns a response at step s3, giving the requested information. The sender of the mobile application can select a mobile application on the first client device 30 for gifting to a recipient operating the second client device 40 at step s4. The sender may also enter the recipient's details at this step, for example, the recipient's name, mobile telephone number, e-mail address etc. Further, the sender may select a wrapper for the mobile application. Further, the sender may make a payment for the mobile application.

As part of the wrapper selection, the sender can record a message that can be forwarded to the application distribution platform 20, which is to form part of the wrapper and the sender may also select one or more components from a wide range of interactive components of varying cost as part of the wrapper. Also as part of the wrapper selection, the sender can select the wrapper and the wrapper may also take into account a GPS location, the time of sending, the sender's information, the recipient's information, trending visuals and/or music in order to produce a unique wrapper for the recipient.

Further as part of the wrapper selection, the recipient of the mobile application may for example play a game that has been personalised by the sender, which generates information about the best gift to supply the recipient with. This may either through the pre-defining gift options that the sender has set, such as price range, or through software that combines known information on the recipient with what the current trending gifts are, or a combination thereof. Now that the sender has selected the mobile application, the wrapper components and the recipient for whom the mobile application is to be gifted (or is some cases the wrapper is "self-selected" as described above), the first client device 30 makes a request for said mobile application to be retrieved from the application distribution platform 20 at step s5. The application distribution platform 20 may return a response at step s6 to the first client device 30 to confirm that the request has been received. The application distribution platform 20 then creates a wrapper comprising any component recorded by the sender and any other components selected by the sender. It may be that the wrapper incorporates additional information, such as advertising or promotional material, as part of the data which is combined together with any purchases made by the sender. Information showing the combined wrapper may be forwarded back to the sender for review and approval. The application distribution platform 20 may then notify the second client device 40 that a mobile application has been gifted to them by the sender at step s7. This notification step may be direct or indirect. A direct notification step may involve transmitting the entire wrapper directly to the second client device 40. However, this is dependent upon it being clear that the recipient already has the gift management application on the second client device for unwrapping the wrapper data. An indirect notification step may involve sending the recipient a link through an e-mail or a text message, for example, which redirects the recipient to initialise a sequence of events that comprises the download of a mobile application. This sequence of events may start with the recipient downloading the application distribution platform 20 as explained below and potentially carrying out certain registration steps. At step s8, the recipient may accept the gifted mobile application, which initialises said sequence of events.

If the recipient of the gifted mobile application does not already have the gift management application installed on the second client device 40, then the recipient may be re-directed to an application store or an Internet website in order to download the gift management application at step s9. The application store may then return a response allowing the download of the gift management application to begin at step s10. At step s1 1 , the second client device 40 downloads and loads the gift management application. It will be appreciated that steps s9 and s10 may not occur in future gifting events because the application distribution platform 20 will be pre-installed onto second client device 40. In this case, step s11 will only involve the loading event and not the downloading event.

Once the gift management application has finished loading on second client device 40, second client device 40 sends a request for the download of the gifted mobile application from one of the application distribution platform 20 or the application store at step s12.

At step s13, the gifted mobile application and a wrapper are downloaded onto the second client device 40 whilst, simultaneously, a distraction is provided at step s14. Alternatively, the wrapper may be already downloaded onto the second client device 40 and thus only the gifted mobile application is downloaded at step s13.

It will be appreciated that the length of time for which the distraction is provided may be longer or shorter than the time it takes for the mobile application to be downloaded from the application distribution platform 20 or application store to second client device 40. However, preferably, the distraction time is equal to or longer than the download time for the mobile application.

Further as part of the gifting experience, when the recipient begins to "unwrap" the gifted mobile application, a peer-to-peer, live chat, video, audio or text dialogue may be automatically opened by the method of the present invention. This allows the sender to witness their gifted mobile application being received by the recipient.

Yet further, the gifted mobile application that is received by the recipient may contain information or details of other potential recipients, such that the first recipient may become a sender and send the gifted mobile application to other recipients.

There may also be provided the option for recipients to reject unwanted gifted mobile applications for themselves and choose to attach another recipient's details such that the unwanted gifted mobile application may be sent on to another recipient.

Figure 3 illustrates a method by which the distraction of a wrapper of the present invention may be provided i.e. steps s13 and s14 of Figure 2. Initially, the mobile application begins to download onto second client device 40 (not shown in Figure 3) and the wrapper launches. Then, the distraction is initialised and provided to the recipient of the mobile application, who may interact with the distraction. The wrapper may then check the download progress of the mobile application; no further action is taken if the distraction time is estimated to be greater than the download time, but the wrapper may extend the original distraction, call for an additional distraction or load an external distraction if the distraction time is estimated to be less than the download time. In the latter case, the process may be iterated until the distraction time is estimated to be greater than the download time, after which the mobile application finishes downloading and the distraction to the recipient finishes.

Once the recipient has finished receiving the gifted mobile application, a notification of receipt may be sent to the sender of the gifted mobile application. As part of this, the recipient may be invited by the downloaded mobile application to compose a thank-you message which may include voice or video imaged data. This can be created on the second client device 40 (not shown in Figure 3) for sending to the first client device 30 (not shown in Figure 3), possibly via mobile distribution platform 20 or the application store.

As part of the creation of the thank you message it is possible for the system to obtain information about the recipient, such as their email address and other contact information that can be used for future promotions or guidance in interaction with the sender for future gifts, amongst other possibilities. As mentioned above, the distraction provided as part of the wrapper for gifted mobile applications may take one of a number of forms. It can be a simple gestural touch-screen based interaction simulating the opening of wrapping paper, or it can be more complicated and include sender generated audio and textural or video information. It may also include puzzles or miniature games which distract the recipient from the downloading process of the gifted mobile applications. Further, the wrapper which provides the distraction may also comprise an advertisement and/or Internet content, wherein the advertisement and/or Internet content is selected based upon a wrapper identification.

All of this ensures a highly personalised and interactive gifting process that is not achievable with any of the prior art. It also ensures that the recipient can install received gifted mobile applications in a more user friendly manner as they are not directly aware of the time taken for the received mobile application to be downloaded onto their mobile device.

It will be appreciated that whilst the embodiment of the present invention described in Figures 1 to 3 relate to the downloading of mobile applications to mobile devices, other embodiments of the present invention may involve the downloading of other applications or other software onto any personal electronic device. More generally, it will be appreciated that aside from mobile application, other applications and other software, all other types of digital media, for example, e-books, e-tickets, PDFs, vouchers, music and videos, to name just a few, may also benefit from the present invention.

Figure 4 shows an example of the software architecture of a mobile application of the present invention. Mobile applications of the present invention use a model-view-controller (MVC) structure, which separates the representation of the mobile application information from the user's interaction with it. The MVC structure comprises a model layer, a controller layer and a view layer, the design of which involves interactions between the layers. The model layer may consist of application data, logic or functions, and it communicates with the server and acquires data via a constant Internet connection in order to populate the screen of the mobile device with downloaded new data. The controller layer processes the data, or converts it into commands, and sends the commands to the view layer, which handles how the data is displayed, in order to generate and update how the model layer is presented to the user by the view layer. The view layer could comprise any output representation of the data that is stored in the model layer, such as diagrams or charts; the view layer could differ, for example, according to the desired different application layouts for smartphones and tablets. Further, the controller layer can also send commands from the view layer back to the model layer in order to update the model layer state following a user's interaction with the view layer.

The mobile application may, for example, be developed using the Android software development kit (SDK) using, for example, Java. One advantage of such native mobile applications over Web applications or mobile cloud applications is that they are written for a specific mobile operating system platform, and therefore they can use device-specific hardware and software, and thus take advantage of the latest technology available on mobile devices. In the example of the present invention where the Android SDK is used, the wrappers may be designed to be modular such that multiple Android developers may create them. It should be understood that the mobile application of Figure 4, or indeed any digital media for downloading according to the present invention, may be developed using any appropriate software to suit any appropriate operating system, for example, iOS or Windows to name just a few.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for improving user interaction during the download time for digital media, comprising:

identifying that a sender has selected the digital media for sending to a recipient's client device;

identifying that the digital media has commenced downloading from a server; and

using a wrapper to provide a distraction on the recipient's client device at least during part of the download time of the digital media.

2. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the wrapper comprises pieces of source code that create a user interface for user interaction.

3. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the wrapper is personalised with one or more of interactive wrapping paper, photo(s), gift tag message(s), video message(s) a mini story, song(s), or a personalised mini game.

4. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the method further comprises assigning a wrapper identification to the recipient of the digital media and using the wrapper identification to create the wrapper.

5. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the wrapper originates from software which is already downloaded on the client device.

6. A method according to any of claim 1 to 4, wherein the method further comprises downloading the wrapper to the recipient's client device from the server and identifying that the wrapper has finished downloading from the server.

7. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the sender and the recipient are the same user who operates a single client device.

8. A method according to any of claims 1 to 6, wherein the sender and the recipient are different users, and wherein the sender operates a first client device and the recipient operates a second client device.

9. A method according to claim 8, wherein the distraction comprises a degree of user interaction between the sender and the recipient.

10. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the server and the client device(s) communicate over the Internet.

1 1. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the distraction comprises user interaction for which the user input method is motion sensitive or gestural.

12. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the total time for which the distraction is provided matches the total download time of the digital media.

13. A method according to any of claims 1 to 1 1 , wherein the total time for which the distraction is provided is longer than the total download time of the digital media.

14. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the wrapper further comprises an advertisement and/or Internet content.

15. A method according to claim 14, wherein the advertisement and/or Internet content is selected based upon a wrapper identification.

16. A method according to any preceding claim, wherein the digital media comprises one or more applications.

17. A computer program product comprising computer executable instructions for implementing the method of any one of the preceding claims. An electronic client device comprising a processor and a memory, the memory containing computer executable instructions for implementing the method of any of claims 1 to 16.