Abstract: An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system design approach is provided employing a dynamic form that evolves automatically as the user enters content, in order to provide visual guidance relative to possible subsequent steps in the IVR system. The dynamic form follows a tree-view structure for the responses. The IVR content may be entered directly into the tree-view structure in an ad hoc manner, which provides a streamlined experience to the user compared to segmented building blocks.

Abstract: Architecture that automatically employs web search user query data to identify the places (e.g., locations, businesses) to which people are likely traveling, and then produces a heatmap visualization of the most popular places in the local area on a local map in a mapping application, which is then viewable in the vertical listing of the search results. This data can be utilized to rank local businesses in terms of popularity by knowing how many people are actually visiting the business as a function of date (and perhaps time). The web search data, which is used to understand the popular locations of a geographical area, includes signals such as searching for directions in the map application, and analyzing directions-related terms such as “From” and “To” in the search results. Another signal can be a location or business search which triggers an appropriate instant answer.