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With Microsoft’s help, your prolonged hints about meetings that could have been an email might no longer fly over the head of a boss. The tech giant has filed for a patent that involves a “meeting insight computer system” to help companies decide how engaging or redundant certain meetings have been.
The application, spotted by GeekWire in the US Patent and Trademark Office, aims to “score” meetings by studying the non-verbal cues of participants, including body language and facial expressions, as well as the environmental conditions of the meeting, such as the temperature and time of day, using cameras and sensors.
The system is described to be able to work in both virtual and in-person settings. It could also predict how well-received a meeting will be, or recommend new times, venues, and participants should a meeting be forecasted to go awry.
Microsoft details that the technology will benefit online meetups, as their effectiveness can be especially difficult to gauge. “Because conventional computerized scheduling systems lack real-world context, users may not be aware that they are attempting to schedule non-optimal meetings, which may result in meetings that are unproductive at best,” it writes.
The company elaborates that many meetings have been “overly long, poorly attended, and recurring,” and could have been “modified and/or avoided” if employers had enough feedback.
As this concept is simply a patent filing at this point, it remains unclear if Microsoft will make it a reality.
Image via Microsoft / USPTO
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