Patent ID: 8275654
Filing Date: 2012-09-25
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method, executed by an electronic device, for scoring proposed changes of components of a concept for feedback by a plurality of evaluators, the method comprising: electronically collecting a level of agreement and a level of disagreement for the components of the concept in a first voting matrix, where disagreeing votes have a negative value, agreeing votes have a positive value and neutral votes have a 0 value; electronically collecting comments indicating desired changes to the components, from the plurality of evaluators; defining an overall disagreement function as a measure of a total of said collected level of disagreement with the concept as a whole that maps said first voting matrix to a real number; defining a mapping of said first voting matrix to an expected voting matrix to be expected when a component is modified and evaluators who have agreed to said component before modification vote neutral to said modified component with a given compromise probability; automatically scoring the components based on an expected incremental effect of a component change on the overall disagreement level for a range of compromise probabilities specified; for each component, determining a compromise probability, for which an expected incremental decrease of said overall disagreement function becomes positive, as each component's minimum compromise probability; determining a relative improvement of a component change as a ratio of the expected incremental decrease in said overall disagreement function and the original overall disagreement level; electronically computing a scoring of the plurality of evaluators, according to a slope of the overall disagreement function; electronically generating two lists, wherein the first list includes the scored components detailing respective non-neutral votings of the evaluators, and the second list includes the scored evaluators detailing respective non-neutral votings of the evaluators; selecting components to be modified on the basis of said lists; providing alternative versions for said components to be modified, according to the collected comments; subjecting said alternative versions to a second round of voting by the evaluators to yield for each component a second voting matrix comprising of a respective column of the first voting matrix and columns containing the votes given to the alternative versions of the component; defining a transformation of the first voting matrix if a particular alternative is adopted as a replacement for a respective column of the voting matrix; electronically analyzing the components in an order of the scored components to select, for each component, an optimal alternative that yields a maximum incremental decrease in said overall disagreement function; and sorting the optimal alternatives for the components, in an original order of the components to electronically assemble an optimal new version of the concept.