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DSO Chat Bot Fact Sheet

Bobby Richter edited this page Aug 17, 2016 · 1 revision

What is it?

  • Fake chat bot that talks to people and helps them over chat channels.
  • Directed by a team of humans but introduced as a robot.
    • “This is a robot. People from DSO created it and help it run.
    • “It can help you do a lot of things, and maybe even show you things that you did not know about the internet and your smartphone.”
    • “It’s available all the time, on Whatsapp and Facebook.”

Why do we do it?

  • Principally, people use Whatsapp to talk with one another.
  • A “bot”, rather than a human, may make participants more comfortable.
  • While Siri and Google Voice are well-known, they’re difficult/impossible to use in Kenya
  • We want to understand:
    • If chat channels are good for learning
    • If chat channels are good for group learning

How people react differently when they are with the group or with the robot (ie: do their questions differ?)

  • If people react to small prompts sent throughout the time.
  • If having a real time personal assistant helps on-boarding new first time smartphones

What it is not:

  • A research experiment testing Artificial Intelligence
  • We are not going to try and prove the efficiency of real AI,
  • We are not trying to prove that a bot is better than a human, but rather to uncover if this might be a next opportunity to tackle.

When does it start? How long does it last?

How do we organize this work?

  • Regular communication happens over Whatsapp groups
  • A Facebook page is used for tutorial content

How do we monitor what is going on?

  • Daily summary updates from actors with highlights and potential opportunities
  • Weekly detailed updates from actors with aggregate
  • Weekly (or on-demand) phone meetings with actors
  • Specific check-ins with actors before/after interventions

How does the team work together to make it happen? What are the different roles?

  • ...

Short-list of questions this project needs to answer:

  • Will people use a chat channel to discuss their smartphone/technology problems with a bot? What does that look like?
  • Will people use a chat channel to discuss their smartphone/technology problems with each other? What does that look like?
  • What are perceptions of a bot?
  • What activities can people be prompted to do from a chat channel?
  • What questions can people ask in a chat channel?
  • What questions can people solve through a chat channel?
  • How much of a role can community play?

What does success look like?

  • Questions above get answered.
  • We don’t go to jail for making a “fake” bot.
  • In the best case scenario, we actually verify the hypothesis that people can easily learn digital skills through chat channels, personal assistants and prompts to explore.

What are our expected challenges?

  • KEEP IT SIMPLE. Keep complexity down.
  • Personnel: needs regular and perfect communications with us.