Patent Document ID: 9836490
Application ID: 14187934
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for facilitating group collaboration by a plurality of collaborators, at least one of said collaborators being a moderator, the method comprising the steps of: providing a plurality of different collaboration tools, the plurality of different collaboration tools configured to collect data items from the plurality of collaborators, wherein the data items can be provided anonymously from one or more of the plurality of collaborators, and wherein the collaboration tools comprise at least a categorizer tool, a data item ranking tool, a solution matrix tool, and a moderator tool; providing a tree data structure, the tree data structure initially having only a root node; receiving input from at least one of the plurality of collaborators regarding one or more categories for said data items, wherein the categorizer tool is configured to categorize said data items according to said categories, receiving said data items from said plurality of collaborators; creating, using said received data items, a first level sub-node branching from said root node for each of said plurality of different collaboration tools; receiving, simultaneously or sequentially, additional data items from said plurality of collaborators via one or more of the plurality of different collaboration tools; analyzing the received additional data items; categorizing said data items using the categorization tool; associating, based on the analysis, each of the received additional data items with one or more of the first level sub-nodes; modifying the one or more of the first level sub-nodes with the received additional data items, wherein the modification comprises an addition of one or more additional sub-nodes, wherein said one or more additional sub-nodes is either an additional first level sub-node or a second level sub-node, wherein said second level sub-node branches from the first level sub-node, wherein each of said plurality of sub-nodes is associated with a non-transitory storage medium configured to store said received data items, and wherein said tree data structure is configured to allow said plurality of collaborators to provide data items simultaneously or sequentially, and further wherein each sub-node represents one or more of the received data items; presenting, by said ranking tool, at least some of said first level sub-nodes or second-level sub-nodes to the plurality of collaborators with a request to providing a ranking input for one or more of the sub-nodes; receiving ranking input from at least one of the plurality of collaborators comprising a rank for at least one of the sub-nodes, wherein the ranking tool is configured to aggregate the received ranking input and create a collective ranking for each sub-node receiving a ranking; presenting, by said solution matrix tool, a matrix comprising a set of criteria and, for each of said criteria, one or more proposed solutions that may meet that respective criterion, wherein at least some of the criteria and/or the proposed solutions comprise data items from the plurality of collaborators; receiving input from the plurality of collaborators comprising a selection of one or more criterion for at least one of the set of criteria; deleting, by a moderator using said moderator tool and based at least in part on the selections from the plurality of collaborators, one or more proposed solutions that do not meet a respective criterion; and presenting, by the solution matrix tool, a preferred proposed solution to each of the set of criteria.