PRIORITY APPLICATION

This application claims priority to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/128,007, filed Sep. 11, 2018, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The subject matter disclosed herein generally relates to the technical field of special-purpose machines that facilitate generation and provision of interactive graphical user interfaces (GUIs), including software-configured computerized variants of such special-purpose machines and improvements to such variants, and to the technologies by which such special-purpose machines become improved compared to other special-purpose machines that also facilitate generation and provision of interactive GUIs. Specifically, the present disclosure addresses systems and methods to facilitate generation and provision of an interactive graphical selection interface.

BACKGROUND

A machine may be configured to interact with a user by generating and causing presentation of an interactive GUI through which the user can make one or more selections from among a set of multiple available options. For example, a machine in the example form of a set-top box may be configured (e.g., by suitable hardware, software, or both) to generate an interactive GUI that appears on a display screen as a rectangular grid (e.g., a data table) in which various pieces of text information are respectively contained in simultaneously displayed rectangular cells of the grid, with each cell corresponding to a different available option (e.g., different media content available for viewing, queuing, recording, or any suitable combination thereof). Moreover, within the displayed grid, one of the cells of text information may be highlighted (e.g., with a cursor or with special outlining) to indicate that its corresponding option is presently selectable (e.g., by performance of a certain control operation).

The machine may generate such a GUI and cause the generated GUI to be presented to a user via a display screen. The user may operate a controller (e.g., a remote control, a smartphone, or a companion device) configured to facilitate interactions with the GUI by one or more control operations (e.g., a control operation that moves the cursor or the highlight to a different cell in the grid or a control operation that selects the presently selectable option corresponding to the currently highlighted cell). In some situations, however, such a grid of text information may seem visually crowded to the user, may provide the user with an unsatisfactory amount of information per cell, may be difficult for the user to read, may seem visually boring to the user, or any combination thereof.

