Patent Issued for Systems and methods for selective and real-time user interface display (USPTO 11449831): Starlight Ag LLC

2022 OCT 11 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Olson, Virginia C. (Minneapolis, MN, US), filed on November 13, 2019, was published online on September 20, 2022, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11449831 is assigned to Starlight Ag LLC (Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Certain industries, such as crop insurance, have traditionally implemented complex software interfaces. For example, insurance-focused software systems were traditionally designed as an underwriting tool for Approved Insurance Providers (AIPs). As such, existing software is still provider-focused and generally includes clumsy and outdated display and functionality.

“Each crop insurance company uses cumbersome drop downs or file tab interfaces such that the user is the one driving what needs to be done. Anyone using such systems needs to be trained and/or refer to a manual to understand where to enter acres, sales renewal, production reports and claims. For example, FIG. 1A illustrates one example of traditional tab-based quoting software that an agent might use. In order to see the quotes for one crop, a user must select the crop to see all the quotes available.

“Similarly, FIG. 1B illustrates another example of tab and drop-down interfaces. An insurance agent user has limited ability to navigate mold, cancels, or transfer policy information. For example, if an agent user makes changes and places it on hold, the system will not prompt the agent user to revisit it, resulting in the agent user thinking the updated coverage is in place when it is not.

“In another example, referring to FIG. 1C, a user selecting coverage is required to click on “endorse policy” before he can make any changes to the policy (coverage change, acreage reporting, production reporting, etc.). If the user is making changes to coverages, he must click on the edit button in order to enter changes for a sales season, then select each crop and select drop downs.

“In another example, complex spreadsheet-type interfaces are provided. Referring to FIG. 1D, when a user is done entering acres or production, he then is required to “commit” the policy which brings him to several screens to finalize the process. Referring to FIG. 1E, an agent user must complete complex spreadsheet-based input form. Referring to FIG. 1F, for production reporting, an agent user is required to use a number of drop-down menus to navigate.

“In another example, referring to FIG. 1G, each insurance company displays quotes differently, and more particularly, the quotes for hail, MPCI, and endorsements are not on one screen a user must navigate to three individual screens.

“As shown by the above examples, very limited software system options exist for the farmer on the insured side. Existing provider-focused software presents an overwhelming number of insurance and crop-related information, very little of which is actually applicable to the particular farmer at a particular time of year. For example, the 2018 Approved Appendix III/M-13 Handbook provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, herein incorporated by reference, details this type of information. Existing systems rely on provider tribal knowledge of applicable menus, data, and selection options. Moreover, the complex displays and selection options presented by the existing provider-focused software are undesirable to insured farmers. An insured user would be required to search through complex menu systems to find the appropriate data. This is burdensome and hinders the user’s ability to operate such systems.

“There presently are no keying options for a farmer user. The only users that can key changes in the AIP programs are insurance agent users. Farmer access is limited to an online farmer portal simply to view their policy-a farmer user can’t make any changes.

“Further, industry software is not intuitive to the user, season, or location; existing industry software presents the same format regardless of whether citrus is insured on the West Coast or tobacco is insured on the East Coast and certainly includes no measure of location or time of year. This challenge is exacerbated as the industry has become Internet-based and distributed.

“Farmers report their acres to two different agencies: the Farm Service Agency (FSA), which is part of the USDA, and the farmer’s crop insurance agency, which is an independent insurance broker. Since there is no electronic platform for the farmer to use, reporting acres to both agencies is a manual, time-intensive process; the farmer manually writes acreage information onto field maps and then must provide hard copies of the field maps to the FSA office and an insurance agent working for the farmer’s insurance agency. Upon receiving the field maps, the FSA office and the insurance agent independently enter the acreage report into their respective software. Eventually the acreage information is synchronized between the FSA and AIP, but the synchronization process takes a minimum of three weeks.

“AIP’s software often has a farmer portal. The farmer portal allows the farmer to view crop insurance information but does not allow the farmer to enter data or electronically upload information-which is instead done by the crop insurance agent-causing a delay in data synchronization between the farmer, the crop insurance agent, the crop insurance company, and FSA.

“AIPs verify that the acres reported at the FSA are within 3% of the acres that are reported to the crop insurance agent. To accomplish this verification, the AIP submits a records request to the Risk Management Agency (RMA) on each policy. The AIP can only ask for a limited amount of records at one time, and the records request for a single policy can be very large, potentially exceeding 200 records. If the AIP must request more records than the record request limit, the AIP must get back in line behind other AIPs to request more. There are 15 AIPs, which means they are constantly in queue. Because the records take a long time to retrieve, the FSA data is not in real time for the farmer or AIP. Additionally, each crop has an acreage reporting deadline. If the AIP has not pulled the farmer’s data into the AIP’s software by the deadline, the farmer must manually report his acres to the insurance agent. Should this happen, the agent will ask the farmer to submit his FSA papers with the acreage report and will cross check the FSA papers when entering the acreage report. In practice, the farmer must manually report his acres to the insurance agent in most instances due to the delay caused in part by the records request limit and queue. If the FSA data does not match what the farmer wrote on his crop insurance acreage report, the agent contacts the farmer to figure out what numbers are correct. This discrepancy occurs roughly half of the time, and if the data is incorrect at the FSA office, the farmer must return to the FSA to correct the data.

“Another problem of traditional systems is that a farmer cannot work his claim until the insurance company has received the acreage report from the insurance agent and has verified the FSA papers for the claim. Waiting for the FSA data to be synchronized with the AIP’s system delays the claim at least three weeks, as previously mentioned. This delay prevents the farmer from working his claim and can be especially costly if the farmer has a claim in the spring.

“Currently, if a farmer needs to submit a claim, it must be done manually by calling an insurance agent. The insurance agent must then cross check the yields to see if there is a possible claim. If the agent doesn’t review the yields in time, the farmer may have a declined claim as it was submitted too late.

“The RMA has introduced ACRSI (acreage crop reporting streamlining initiative). ACRSI gives the farmer the option to manually report their acres in person to either the FSA or the insurance agent, and then the receiving party of the report will enter the farmer’s acres and electronically submit the data. If the farmer reports to the FSA, then the FSA needs to synchronize the farmer’s acres with the RMA. The RMA then further synchronizes the farmer’s acres with the AIP when the AIP requests the report. If the farmer reports their acres to the insurance agent, the insurance agent enters the acres into the AIP’s software and then the AIP sends the farmer’s acres to the RMA, who then additionally sends the farmer’s acres to the FSA. Even if there was not a delay in retrieving the FSA records, the farmer still needs to sign a crop insurance acreage report which involves mailing or dropping off a hard copy to the insurance agent. This cumbersome process is summarized in FIG. 1H, with the corresponding time requirements illustrated in FIG. 1I.

“Therefore, there is a need for systems and methods that can guide insured users through the complex process of crop insurance in real time over a distributed Internet-based architecture.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Embodiments solve the technological problem of how to meaningfully display large and unique data sets on a user device to geographically and communicatively-distributed users. In particular, systems and methods described herein provide a specific solution to existing technological problems in computers and display technologies. This improvement allows computers, for the first time, to provide rapid access to and process information for which they had not been previously available, specifically, insured user-focused data.

“This technological improvement is necessarily rooted in computer technology in order to overcome a problem specifically arising in the realm of computer networks. Specifically, large sets of geographically-specific and user-specific data across computer networks are displayed and hidden as appropriate. Likewise, end-user functionality is similarly enabled or disabled as appropriate.

“More particularly, embodiments are directed to a particular manner of summarizing and presenting information in electronic devices. As described herein, specific features disclose a specific manner of displaying a limited set of information to the user, rather than using conventional user interface methods to display all provider-accessible data. The disclosed invention improves the efficiency of using an electronic device by bringing together a limited list of common functions and commonly accessed stored data. Specifically, the majority of farmers insure a limited number of types of crops with a limited number of coverage options, but in order to access such data, traditional systems require an agent with tribal knowledge of the data to navigate large data sets. Embodiments described herein solve that problem.

“In an embodiment, a system for selective and real-time data display comprises a computing platform including computing hardware of at least one processor, a memory operably coupled to the at least one processor, and configured to store instructions invoked by the at least one processor; instructions that, when executed on the computing platform, cause the computing platform to implement: a graphical user interface configured to display, in real-time, data to a user; and a dynamically-guided subsystem including: a task engine configured to manage task data related to the user, the task data comprising a plurality of tasks, a timing engine configured to determine timing data related to each of the plurality of tasks, the timing data being specific to the user, a location engine configured to determine location data related to each task, the location data being specific to the user, a data integration engine configured to integrate selected task data, from at least one database, and based on a set of decision criteria based on at least the timing data and the location data, and a display engine configured to populate the selected task data to the graphical user interface, and receive user-inputted crop data based on the selected task data from the graphical user interface.

“In an embodiment, a method for selective and real-time data display comprises providing a computing platform including computing hardware of at least one processor, a memory operably coupled to the at least one processor, and configured to store instructions invoked by the at least one processor, the computing platform having a graphical user interface configured to display, in real-time, crop data to a user; managing task data related to the user, the task data comprising a plurality of tasks; determining timing data related to each of the plurality of tasks, the timing data being specific to the user; determining location data related to each task, the location data being specific to the user; integrating selected task data, from at least one database, and based on a set of decision criteria based on at least the timing data and the location data; populating the selected task data to the graphical user interface; and receiving user-inputted crop data based on the selected task data from the graphical user interface.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system for selective and real-time data display, the system comprising: a computing platform including computing hardware of at least one processor, a memory operably coupled to the at least one processor, and configured to store instructions invoked by the at least one processor; instructions that, when executed on the computing platform, cause the computing platform to implement: a graphical user interface configured to display, in real-time, data to a user; and a dynamically-guided subsystem including: a task engine configured to manage task data related to the user, the task data comprising a plurality of tasks, wherein the plurality of tasks includes at least one predefined task defined by selectively stripping a data source, a timing engine configured to determine timing data related to each of the plurality of tasks, the timing data being specific to the user, a location engine configured to determine location data related to each task, the location data being specific to the user, a data integration engine configured to integrate selected task data, from at least one database, and based on a set of decision criteria related to a given task and based on at least the timing data and the location data, wherein the selected task data is integrated including for the at least one predefined task, and a display engine configured to populate the selected task data to the graphical user interface, and receive actual user-inputted crop data based on and in response to the selected task data from the graphical user interface, wherein when the actual user-inputted crop data sufficiently responds to the selected task data, a subsequent task is added to the plurality of tasks for subsequent integration by the data integration engine and population by the display engine.

“2. The system of claim 1, further comprising instructions that, when executed on the computing platform, cause the computing platform to implement: an analysis sub-system including: an input/output engine configured to receive the user-inputted crop data from the display engine, and an analysis engine configured to analyze the user-inputted crop data, wherein the input/output engine is further configured to upload the analyzed user-inputted crop data in real time to a plurality of industry databases.

“3. The system of claim 2, wherein the plurality of industry databases includes a Risk Management Agency (RMA) database, a Farm Service Agency (FSA) database, and an Approved Insurance Provider (AIP) database.

“4. The system of claim 2, wherein the user-inputted crop data is uploaded by bypassing a user of the RMA database, the FSA database, or the AIP database.

“5. The system of claim 2, wherein the display engine is further configured to receive an indication from the user of an electronic location for which the user-inputted crop data is to be uploaded, and wherein the input/output engine is further configured to upload the user-inputted crop data to the electronic location.

“6. The system of claim 3, wherein the timing data is a time of year and the selected task data corresponds to farming tasks related to the time of year.

“7. The system of claim 6, wherein the user is a farmer and the user-inputted crop data is farming data specific to the farmer.

“8. The system of claim 1, wherein the display engine is configured to populate the selected task data to the graphical user interface by selectively presenting all products the user has purchased on a single screen.

“9. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of tasks includes a set of icons associated with the task, wherein the display engine is further configured to delete the sets of icons for all completed tasks in the memory.

“10. The system of claim 1, wherein the display engine is further configured to populate a primary screen and a task-based screen, wherein upon log-out and re-log-in, the display engine is further configured to immediately populate the task-based screen.

“11. The system of claim 1, wherein the display engine is further configured to automatically present a subsequent task in the plurality of tasks once a previous task in the plurality of tasks is completed.

“12. A method for selective and real-time data display, the method comprising: providing a computing platform including computing hardware of at least one processor, a memory operably coupled to the at least one processor, and configured to store instructions invoked by the at least one processor, the computing platform having a graphical user interface configured to display, in real-time, crop data to a user; managing task data related to the user, the task data comprising a plurality of tasks, wherein the plurality of tasks includes at least one predefined task defined by selectively stripping a data source; determining timing data related to each of the plurality of tasks, the timing data being specific to the user; determining location data related to each task, the location data being specific to the user; integrating selected task data, from at least one database, and based on a set of decision criteria related to a given task and based on at least the timing data and the location data, wherein the selected task data is integrated including for the at least one predefined task; populating the selected task data to the graphical user interface; receiving actual user-inputted crop data based on and in response to the selected task data from the graphical user interface; and when the actual user-inputted crop data sufficiently responds to the selected task data, adding a subsequent task to the plurality of tasks for subsequent integrating and populating.

“13. The method of claim 12, further comprising: analyzing the user-inputted crop data; and uploading the analyzed user-inputted crop data in real time to a plurality of industry databases.

“14. The method of claim 13, wherein the plurality of industry databases includes a Risk Management Agency (RMA) database, a Farm Service Agency (FSA) database, and an Approved Insurance Provider (AIP) database.

“15. The method of claim 14, wherein the user-inputted crop data is uploaded by bypassing a user of the RMA database, the FSA database, or the AIP database.

“16. The method of claim 12, further comprising: populating the selected task data to the graphical user interface by selectively presenting all products the user has purchased on a single screen.

“17. The method of claim 12, wherein each of the plurality of tasks includes a set of icons associated with the task, the method further comprising: deleting the sets of icons for all completed tasks in the memory.

“18. The method of claim 12, further comprising: populating a primary screen and a task-based screen, wherein upon log-out and re-log-in, the display engine is further configured to immediately populate the task-based screen.

“19. The method of claim 12, further comprising: automatically presenting a subsequent task in the plurality of tasks once a previous task in the plurality of tasks is completed.

“20. A system for selective and real-time data display, the system comprising: means for presenting a graphical user interface configured to display, in real-time, crop data to a user; means for managing task data related to the user, the task data comprising a plurality of tasks, wherein the plurality of tasks includes at least one predefined task defined by selectively stripping a data source; means for determining timing data related to each of the plurality of tasks, the timing data being specific to the user; means for determining location data related to each task, the location data being specific to the user; means for integrating selected task data, from at least one database, and based on a set of decision criteria related to a given task and based on at least the timing data and the location data, wherein the selected task data is integrated including for the at least one predefined task; means for populating the selected task data to the graphical user interface; means for receiving actual user-inputted crop data based on and in response to the selected task data from the graphical user interface; and means for adding, when the actual user-inputted crop data sufficiently responds to the selected task data, a subsequent task to the plurality of tasks for subsequent integrating and populating.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Olson, Virginia C. Systems and methods for selective and real-time user interface display. U.S. Patent Number 11449831, filed November 13, 2019, and published online on September 20, 2022. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11449831.PN.&OS=PN/11449831RS=PN/11449831

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