BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Today, cultural and geographic boundaries are eroding, and people with very diverse cultural backgrounds are now colleagues, coworker, friends and families. However, it is a cross-cultural norm to commemorate or recognize significant personal, life, and cultural events such as births, deaths, weddings, funerals, graduations, holidays, religious observances, national holidays, celebrations, and the like. Problems arise when individuals from very different cultural backgrounds wish to exchange a “commemorative token” of an important event or to express a personal feeling without having specific knowledge of the culturally acceptable style, content, format, or details.

It is well known to use computer based language translation, but much more is required to convey a sentiment with culturally appropriate symbols, images, colors, graphics, and appropriate contextually accurate idiomatic phrases. There are many cross-cultural books and guides for use when visiting a foreign country or interacting with a person from a different culture but these require study and would need to be interpreted by the user for the information to be useful in selecting or creating a greeting card, or the like that would be culturally appropriate. An innocuous choice, such as selecting a birthday card for an English speaking South Korean colleague that includes red colored text would be insulting since in the Korean culture red ink is reserved for the deceased. Cultural preferences and taboos vary greatly from culture to culture. Images of animals, for instance, have great significance in most cultures but the symbolic implications of an individual type of animal vary greatly between cultures. For instance, in China the badger is a symbol great happiness, however in the West the badger is seen as an annoying pest and the source of the expression “to badger someone.” So a depiction of this animal would be appropriate for a birthday card for a Chinese adult but not for an American adult, who could very well see the image as a personal, less than subtle insult.

In addition, poorly chosen colors and graphics may convey an inappropriate sentiment. If a US female salesperson received a card from an Asian client that had an image of a large arrangement red roses and used a highly stylized red colored font and pink graphics, regardless of the personal message the card would be perceived as romantic even if the intention was friendship or gratitude.

Prior art approaches for providing socially appropriate customized greeting cards have included U.S. Pat. No. 5,600,563, titled; “System for printing social expression cards.” This approach provides users with a means to produce greeting cards by selection from a database and allows for a degree of user customization. The various surfaces of the virtual card are individually viewed on the monitor to assure that images and text are properly positioned. If modifications are required, the appropriate steps are repeated. Upon selection of a category, one or more card images linked to the category are retrieved and displayed on the color monitor. The system does provide a general class of card category selection for the type of social expression card desired such as “Birthday” “Anniversary” “Get Well” and sub-classification such as “Relative,” “Children” or “Humorous.”

US Patent Application US2003/0004997A, titled; “Method for online personalization of greeting cards” provides a system and method for providing convenient manufacture and delivery of customized greeting cards via a website that allows a user to enter information used to assist in the selection of an appropriate expression and image. In addition, an advertisement, sales promotion or product sale can be associated with the greeting card and used to subsidize the cost of the greeting card. The website also allows users to seek assistance from others with respect to expressions and images and are categorized by occasion.

US Patent Application US2009/0276207A1 titled; “Host Greeting Card” is a bilingual greeting card that celebrates immigrant's holidays in a host country. The bilingual greeting card has text in the language of the host country and in the immigrant's language of their foreign country and may celebrate the immigrant's Holiday. For example, a Chinese New Year card in English and Chinese that is sold in the United States. The Chinese New Year card is bilingual and uses greetings from the immigrant's country or some verse related to his or her country, and also has pictures or images relating to the immigrant's celebration or holiday.

U.S. Pat. No. 8,751,474B2, titled, “Card Customization by Tailored Intergenerational Historic Snapshots” is a user-customized card that includes a tailored intergenerational historic snapshot message that informs a younger person about the world an older person lived in when they were young. The older person's age and the younger person's age may be used to identify a historic time period in which the older person was the same age as the younger person. A circumstance that occurred in the historic time period may be selected from a database or web search result. The message may be tailored to the ages of the people involved. The message may also be tailored to recite circumstances specific to a topic area or a geographic location. The message may be used in the text generally, and in photo captions specifically. The card may be a greeting card, birthday card, gift card, or other card. Items other than cards may also be customized with such a message. This system is intended to assist users to easily create personalized notes to your loved ones for birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, holidays, and other special events. These notes are automatically filled by the system with historic facts that are chosen based on each individual's interests and are intended to help remind loved ones that even though the world has changed, their family relationships are stronger than ever.

None of the afore mentioned systems or methods take into account the potential cultural and social distinctions between the giver and the recipient and provide any means to recognize and mitigate any resulting inadvertent inappropriate or offensive sentiments, text, graphics, photos, colors, photos, or gestures that could be included in a cross-cultural greeting card. In addition, none of the systems or methods provides detailed interactive explanations of the positive and negative significance and implications of the greeting card and greeting card elements so that the giver can fully appreciate the intended sentiment to convey to the recipient and to ensure that the appropriate sentiment was selected. The prior art does not require cultural profiles of the giver or the recipient, or modify the presentation sequence of card elements and options or profile questions based on previously provided profile information. In addition, the prior art does not take into account the national, local, and regional laws, rules, or social mores of where the invention is practiced and provide means to modify the user experience and product options in accordance with these geographic and demographic social norms and orientations.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

What is required is a system and method for a user to designate a type of event and emotion she wishes to convey, her own cultural background, and the cultural background of the recipient via dynamically modified sequence of multiple choice questions. In addition to cultural background of the recipient, basic information is required to further enhance the appropriateness of the expression. With access to information on age, gender, social status, relevant geographic locations, relationship to the presenter and cultural background information an appropriate a series relevant greeting card styles, components, or the like can be automatically selected from a database for review and approval. Also with access to cultural profile information, greeting cards to celebrate culturally specific holidays and events can be provided based on the probable or potential interest to the user or the recipient. The greeting cards can be digitally stored as templates with interchangeable text, colors, and fonts, characters from various languages, translations, culture specific idiomatic phases, graphics, and images. Once created, the selection of appropriate greeting products are shown to a potential giver on a touch screen of a mobile phone, tablet, personal computer, or kiosk for final selection by the giver and customizations such as including a personal image, the name of the recipient, and/or a personal message. With each potential selection, an explanation and translation of the cultural significance, history, traditions, taboos, and implications of the text and graphics is provided to aid the user in making an appropriate selection and presentation of the greeting card and a better appreciation of the of the recipient's cultural perspective. In addition, the national, local, and regional laws, rules, or social mores of where the invention is practiced are taken into account and means are provided to modify the user experience and product options in accordance with these geographic and demographic social norms and orientations. The system and method of the present invention is directed at creating and producing a physical or virtual greeting card product to convey an intended emotion or to recognize or celebrate an important life event or occasion and to avoid inappropriate or unintended sentiments.

