WO2001062018A2

WO2001062018A2 - Mobile telephone with improved man machine interface

Info

Publication number: WO2001062018A2
Application number: PCT/GB2001/000675
Authority: WO
Inventors: Eric Laurent
Original assignee: Vtech Mobile Limited
Priority date: 2000-02-18
Filing date: 2001-02-16
Publication date: 2001-08-23
Also published as: GB0003944D0; DE10195666T1; GB2359459A; AU2001233885A1; WO2001062018A3

Abstract

Hence, the invention envisages using an animated figure or object performing actions indicative of communications actions; for example, when dialling out, a cartoon character could be seen to be dialling a phone key pad or holding a telephone handset to his or her ear. The appearance and/or sound of the animated figure or object serves as a visual and/or oral indication of the communication function being performed.

Description

Mobile Telephone with improved man machine interface

Field of the Invention

This invention relates to a mobile telephone and in particular to a mobile telephone with an improved man machine interface. The term 'mobile telephone' used in this patent specification should be expansively construed to cover any kind of mobile device with communications capabilities and includes radio telephones, smart phones, communicators, and wireless information devices. It includes devices able to communicate using not only mobile radio such as GSM or UMTS, but also any other kind of wireless communications system, such as Bluetooth.

Description of the Prior Art

One of the problems facing the designers of mobile telephone user interfaces (often called 'man machine interfaces' or 'MMIs') is how to allow the user to comprehend the internal status of the mobile telephone. For example, to select or initiate a function (e.g. to open an address book function, enter a PIN security number or to alter the ring melody) a user has to understand that the status of the telephone is such that the function can be selected or initiated. A closely related problem is how to enable a user to confidently alter the internal status of the phone. This process can be thought of as the problem of how to enable a user to confidently navigate through the feature set of the telephone. Because many quite intricate operations have to be mastered early on for most mobile telephone users (setting security codes, altering ring melodies etc.), it is particularly important to facilitate the task of navigating to and activating features in the required way. In addition, mobile telephones offer a very wide (and ever increasing) range of functions. The design of an effective MMI which can be (a) easily navigated by novices yet is (b) flexible enough to enable a large number of functions to be included, is a very challenging task. In fact, it is widely acknowledged that few mobile telephone owners regularly use any but the most basic telephone features because current MMIs are difficult to fully understand. Hence, the technical problem of effectively enabling the user to understand the internal status of the mobile telephone has to date been inadequately addressed.

One of the reasons why many conventional MMIs are inadequate is that mobile telephones are small handheld devices which generally include small display screens. The size of display screens, even for PDA type devices, is far too small to handle a rich and effective MMI, such as the Apple Macintosh Operating System MMI. As a consequence, MMI designers have tended to use text based MMIs, even though the superiority of graphical user interfaces has long been accepted in the desktop computing environment.

Conventionally, the small display size has also meant that several hierarchies of functions have to be offered to a user: the interface can be thought of as having many layers, with the user having to first locate the correct top level function and then, within that function, progressively drill down (sometimes through 3 or more layers) to complete the required task. Hence, for example, if a user wishes to enter a new telephone number into an address book stored on the mobile phone, he has to locate a top level function, typically called 'Address Book' . He then selects that function and is presented with a list of second level functions relevant to the 'Address book' top level function. These second level functions typically include options for reading the contents of the Address Book, entering a new number and password protecting access to the address book. Say the user selects the option for entering a new number; he then is presented with a third level screen display asking him to complete various fields with the contact information. With pure text based, multi-level MMIs, it can be very difficult for users to build up an understanding of the structure of the MMI; without understanding, it is very difficult to navigate extensively.

Very recently, some manufacturers have introduced GSM mobile telephones which are beginning to move away from the text only MMI. For example, the Philips Xenium telephone can display several icons on screen; Nokia and Mitsubishi have GSM telephones which can display one icon on a screen at a time. Reference may also be made to some PC operating systems and applications, in which a contextual help system is used: when the user places the mouse arrow over an icon, folder etc. for more than a couple of seconds, a help call-out or balloon appears with an explanation of the function of the icon, folder etc.

It is particularly important that a user understands when a device is actually performing a communications operation (such as dialling out to another telephone; sending a SMS etc.) since mobile telephones are fundamentally used for communications. However, that has conventionally been achieved using text messages (e.g. the word 'Dialling' if the telephone is dialling out). As explained above, purely text based information can be hard to read on the small screen size of many mobile telephones and their exclusive use in MMIs usually gives the MMI a cluttered appearance which is difficult to understand, learn and use.

Statement of the Invention

In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention, a mobile telephone comprises: computing means for storing representations of one or more figures or objects; and a display operable to be controlled by the computing means to display the figures or objects; characterised in that the display is operable to show a figure or object animated to indicate the status of the mobile telephone as performing a communications function.

Hence, the invention envisages using an animated figure or object performing actions indicative of communications actions; for example, when dialling out, a cartoon character could be seen to be dialling a phone key pad or holding a telephone handset to his or her ear. The appearance and/or sound of the animated figure or object serves as a visual and/or oral indication of the communication function being performed. When a SMS message is being sent, a flying book could be displayed. Instead of a cartoon character, an image and/or voice of a film or pop star could be used, enabling the mobile telephone to become both an essential merchandising vehicle for film or pop stars and also of great appeal to the youth market. The images of different stars could be downloadable to the mobile telephone.

In another aspect, there is provided a mobile telephone in which a caller to the mobile telephone can be placed 'on hold' and the mobile telephone can then cause music and/or a message to be played to the caller whilst the caller remains 'on hold'. The music may be a simple melody (such as are conventionally stored in GSM mobile telephone as ringing alerts) but also music associated with a film or cartoon character, or may be music from a well known musician, particularly pop musician. The message may be spoken by that character or a music or film star. In this way, the owner of a mobile telephone can make a fashion statement to those calling him or her. The film or cartoon character or musician may be the same animated figure as used in the first aspect of the invention. Brief Description of the Drawings

The invention will be further described with reference to the accompanying drawings in which: Figure 1 is a schematic depiction of a mobile telephone;

Figures 2 and 3 are screen shots of the start up screen;

Figure 3 is a screen shot showing one of the animations used when there is an incoming call;

Figure 4 is a screen shot showing one of the animations used when there an outgoing call is being made.

Detailed Description The present invention will be described with reference to a mobile telephone. Several of the functions will be particularly pertinent to third generation UMTS mobile telephones. The mobile telephone is shown generally at 1. It includes the conventional features of a display 2, a start call button 3, an end call button 4 and numeric keys 6. In addition, it also includes a joystick 5, which comprises a short cylindrical member up standing from the front face of the telephone 1. The joystick can be readily pushed by a user in one of four different directions. The telephone is switched on by the user pressing start call button 3 for in excess of 1 second. Then, a cartoon character as shown in figures 1 and 2 is displayed on the display of the telephone. The cartoon figure is shown in animation waving to the user, indicating to the user that the telephone is starting operations.

When a user wishes to make a call, he enters the number to be called using numeric keys 6 and then presses the start call button 3. The telephone then communicates with a base station as the first leg of an often complex routing to the destination telephone. To indicate to the user that the mobile telephone is actively engaged in a communications process, the cartoon character is shown dialling a telephone as in Figure 5. This confirms to the user the status of the telephone in an easily understood manner which is entirely text free. Many other communications functions of the telephone can be represented by animations of this sort. For example, an incoming call is illustrated with a telephone descending to a cartoon character, as shown in Figure 4. Sending a SMS is associated with a flying book.

Not only does the use of animated characters and/or objects represent an effective way of informing the user that a communications function is occurring, but it also offers a potentially very valuable promotion and merchandising vehicle for TV and film characters, and music artists.

A further feature of this embodiment is that a caller to the mobile telephone can be placed 'on hold' and the mobile telephone can then cause music and/or a message to be played to the caller whilst the caller remains 'on hold'. The music may simply be one of the many melodies as are conventionally stored in GSM mobile telephone as ringing alerts.

In addition, music associated with a film or cartoon character, or may be music from a well known musician, particularly pop musician. The message may be spoken by that character or a music or film star. In this way, the owner of a mobile telephone can make a fashion statement to those calling him or her.

The 'on hold' feature automatically mutes the ringer and the microphone. It plays a melody to the calling party as long as a key is pressed; in this embodiment, it is the start call button or SEND button 3. Or, music etc. could be played for as long as desired; this might be triggered by a long press on the start call button 3, for example. The music 'On- Hold' feature allows one to answer a call during a meeting, for example, step out of the meeting room and then take the call, whilst the caller is provided with music whilst he or she waits. Hence, when the phone rings, the user can accept the call by a short press on the SEND key 3. He can then activate the 'music on hold' feature by a long press on the SEND key and then, stop that same feature and open the call by another long press on SEND key 3.

Another feature in this embodiment relates to the use of the numeric keypad to input text: the reduced keyboards of conventional GSM mobile telephones typically include 4 rows of 3 buttons. These are primarily allotted to the numbers 0 - 9 and the '*' and '#' keys.

Conventionally, the numeric keys 2 - 9 are each associated with 3 letters as well - e.g. the number key '2' is associated with the letters 'a', 'b' and 'c', the number key '3' is associated with the a triplet of letters 'd', 'e' and 'f etc. for the entire alphabet. There are then two basic approaches to spelling out words. The most rudimentary requires a single press of the key to select the first letter of the triplet, a second press to select the second letter and a third to select the third letter. This is very laborious, especially given the very small size of typical GSM mobile telephone keys.

The more sophisticated approach requires a disambiguating system such as the Tegic T-9 system determining the correct word through a dictionary look up process. In such a system, a software algorithm determines which word is intended to be input by comparing the various possible 3 letter combinations with an internal dictionary. Hence, in such a case, the user only has to press once on a key. It is up to the software to consider the various character strings that are possible, and match them against a dictionary. For example, if the user has pressed the key labelled ABC, then the key labelled DEF, and then indicated that the word has ended, he could have meant AD, AE, AF, BD, BE, BF, CD, CE, CF. Only the letters BE represent an English word, so that word is automatically presented to the user. In the present embodiment, a prediction capability is provided. On the top of the screen, the word in the dictionary which is most likely to be meant is displayed: this happens before the user has actually completed the word. If this is actually the word that the user started to key in, he can get it in full by nudging the joystick to the right. An additional feature of the present embodiment is the ability to take into account names and addresses in the phonebook, databases and any other user defined words/names which the user has entered into the mobile telephone. These user defined words/names become part of the user vocabulary. This underlines the advantage that can be taken of the synergy between various sources of information managed by the mobile telephone, and more generally, by a PDA.

The dictionary is stored following an order that is directly inherited from the sequence of keys to be typed to input them. For example, the word "best" is written by typing successively on keys 2aBc, 3dEf, 7pqrS, 8Tuv, so the associated string would be 2378. This way, the dictionary can be accessed quickly on the first character input, thanks to a dichotomy algorithm. A pointer is then put on the first matching sequence. On every new key stroke, the input string is upgraded and the next "first matching sequence" can be easily looked up by moving downwards in the dictionary.

The dictionary is compressed. A character is stored on one byte, which allows 256 possibilities. As there is far less than 256 characters, the remaining codes are used to code the most frequently found sequences of 2 characters. According to various studies 2 characters seems to be the optimal length to consider Hoffman code.

Claims

1. A mobile telephone comprising: computing means for storing representations of one or more figures or objects; and a display operable to be controlled by the computing means to display the figures or objects; characterised in that the display is operable to show a figure or object animated to indicate the status of the mobile telephone as performing a communications function.

2. The mobile telephone of Claim 1 which, when dialling out, displays a cartoon character dialling a phone key pad .

3. The mobile telephone of Claim 1 which, when a SMS message is being sent, displays a flying book.

4. The mobile phone of Claim 1 in which an image and/or voice or a film or pop star is used to indicate the status of the mobile telephone as performing a communications function.

5. The mobile phone of Claim 4 in which an irriage and/or voice is downloadable to the mobile telephone.

6. A mobile telephone in which a caller to the mobile telephone can be placed ^Λon hold' and the mobile telephone can then cause music and/or a message to be played to the caller whilst the caller remains ^xon hold' .

7. The mobile telephone of Claim 6 in which the caller is placed ^Non hold' by the user pressing a key or keys .

8. The mobile telephone of Claim 6 in which the music is music associated with a film or cartoon character, or is music from a well known musician, including a pop musician .

9. The mobile telephone of Claim 8 in which the message is spoken by that character or a music or film star.

10. The mobile telephone of Claim 8 in which an image of a film or cartoon character or musician is used as the animated figure in a telephone as claimed in Claim 1.