HackUX: Bots
by Oracle and Orange
Oracle & Orange organized a 48-hours hackathon as they have started a revolution in designing the future of messaging & bots. The hackathon was based on an introductory class about UX for chatbots, and then a group project.
BRIEF
Pitching an individual's idea for potential chatbots that could be used in a specific pool of subjects.
DELIVERABLES
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User persona
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Scenario
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Chatbot Persona
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Prototype
WHAT THEY JUDGED
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Originality
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Presentation
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Innovativeness
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Design
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Team collaboration
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Prototype
TEAM OF 5
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Me!
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Mungo
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Kostas
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Ivana
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Lucia
PROBLEM: "WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY LIFE?"
What if the chatbot could advise you on what to do with your life? Everybody wonders what they should do at some point, whether at school, at university, or even in the middle of what they once thought was their dream job.
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SOLUTION
A life-journey advisor that gives you support and guides you when you need it.

Discovery and Research
QUESTIONS
We started working out what questions the chatbot might need to ask. We brainstormed on what questions would be important and we came up with 38 questions. The questions covered a broad range of topics.
Examples:
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"How are you feeling today?"
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"Do you like to be challenged?"
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"Do you prefer routine or variety?"
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"What do you want to talk about?"
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"What frustrations are you best to cope with?

AFFINITY MAP
The next day, Lucia and I started to sort the existing data gathered during the brainstorm, and we divided our questions up into five broad categories. These were skills, preferences, personality, attitudes and demographic information. Between these, we would hopefully be able to cover the most important guiding points for someone trying to work out what to do with their life.

TIME CONSTRAINS
The 24-hour time-limit meant we had to skip some parts of the UX process. On a longer project, we would have validated our questions with user interviews before moving on.
Define
PERSONA: FIONA
After presenting the insights from the affinity map, Mungo and Kostas led the work on creating our persona archetype.
Here is Fiona, a 21-year-old student in her final year. She is torn because, like many students, she has skills and interests that could lead her in different directions. She could follow her communication passion to become a marketing professional. She could dive into languages as a multilingual copywriter. She might even do something with code…

SCENARIO
Fiona goes to a job fair. She has a crisis moment when she realises that she’s not just interested in communication-style jobs, but might actually want to become a programmer. So she turns to our chatbot for help. Then, with the chatbot’s assistance, she decides what she will do with her life. All of a sudden, she gains direction, meaning, and purpose.
BOT PERSONA: BABA MARTIN
Our chatbot is called Baba Martin. “Baba” meaning father in many languages — suggesting wisdom and experience, and “Martin” from Martin Luther King, suggesting inspiration and understanding. He’s an elephant because elephants are a symbol of wisdom and contemplation. And deciding what to do with your life requires wisdom and contemplation. Baba Martin is friendly, informal, caring and curious. He always knows how to ask the right question that will help you on your journey.

Design

BOT PERSONALITY
As a life-journey advisor, Baba Martin's personality is knit together to its personas and its content.
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Baba Martin is
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Friendly and positive
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Cares about you
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Motivates you
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Challenges you
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CONTENT
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The way he communicates is simple and direct
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Max two sentences per message
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No more than two messages without interaction: keep the user engaged
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Avoid text-speak: use correct grammar and capitalisation
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Use emojis: keep the right level of informality
Deliver
PROTOTYPE
Now that we had the user persona, scenario and bot persona, we had a few short hours to make our chatbot prototype. It would ask Fiona about the jobs fair, find out what she had felt about it, and ultimately guide her career decisions based on her answers.
During the presentation, we described the processes going on behind Baba Martin’s answers.
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You can have a look at our prototype demo HERE
