Creating a uniquely patentable experience

To start, the goal of the following project was not to create something that was so unique that it warranted a patent. What's so distinctly "UXee" about it is that our team was merely trying to solve a real world problem in the most elegant and efficient way possible. We just happened to create a solution that no one had considered previously.

The problem

At the time we were attempting to solve a problem whereby people had to repeatedly complete certain tasks online more than once. Think testers that need to ensure that their application is functioning as it should each week, researchers who want to know when articles of interest have been published each day, or people who are constantly hitting "Refresh" while waiting for the latest concert tickets to go on sale. If you have to do it more than once then it would be great if it could be automatically done for you.

The solution

Often times the best user experience is what I like to call the "Do what I want" button. You have something that you need to accomplish and regardless of how complex that process might be, it would be amazing if you could just push a button and that task would be completed. In theory we could take it a step further to automate that button click, but that's a discussion for another time.

We knew that the biggest beneficiaries of this "automation for all" experience would be people with very little (ie any) technical background, so trying to deliver the "Do what I want" button for them was paramount. Ideally we needed to come up with a way for them to just tell their device what they wanted it to do.... and then the device would do it.

So that's exactly what we did.

We created a "plain english" language that you could use to tell your device exactly what you wanted it to do. You could say things like:

• Go to Amazon and buy me a soccer ball that costs less than $20

• Send me a text message as soon as Taylor Swift tickets become available in New York

• Attempt to schedule an appointment after you trigger a warning on our site

The way that we designed the language meant that you could literally create an infinite number of repeatable tasks, all without needing to know anything about software or code.

And apparently, what we achieved had never been accomplished before.

Had we not been pushing ourselves to create such a great user experience, we never would have ended up creating something that was special enough to patent.