Patent ID: 7007245

Claim:
A system for product selection, the system comprising: a. a CPU; b. a memory operatively connected to the CPU, the memory containing a program adapted to be executed by the CPU and the CPU and memory cooperatively adapted for presenting a user interface and expert interface to an expert system for product selection; c. an expert-interface code segment embodied on a computer-readable medium configured and adapted for: i. creating and modifying via a graphical user interface a graphically-displayed tree structure representing a plurality of product applications; ii. associating and modifying via a graphical user interface one or more use condition with each node of the tree structure; and iii. associating and modifying via a graphical user interface one or more suitability ratings for a plurality of applications; iv. creating and modifying via a graphical user interface a list of products v. associating and modifying via a graphical user interface one or more product with each leaf node of the tree structure; vi. associating via a graphical user interface use condition choices with each product vii. associating via a graphical user interface suitability ratings for each product d. a user-interface code segment embodied on a computer-readable medium configured and adapted for i. selecting via a graphical-use interface a path in the tree structure, and for displaying on the same window of the graphical-use interface: 1. the products associated with the leaf node of the selected path; 2. the use conditions associated with each node of the selected path; and 3. the product usability suitability indicators associated with each node of the selected path; ii. selecting via the same window of the graphical-use interface one or more of the use conditions associated with the nodes of the selected path and for entering the user-defined relative importance of the product usability suitability indicators for the intended application of the products associated with the leaf nodes of the selected path; iii. comparing the selected use conditions with the displayed products, wherein products not having such selected use conditions as attributes are filtered out of the displayed list of products; iv. comparing the entered relative importance of the product usability suitability indicators with the product usability suitability indicators associated with the displayed products, associating a score with each displayed product indicating the correlation of the comparison, and displaying the score with the product; and v. printing the resulting product list, corresponding suitability scores, selected tree path, selected use conditions, and entered relative importance of product usability suitability indicators.