MeBot@YaVi

Intention

To communicate my mundane everyday life to the user in an engaging and amusing way. 

Context

The fact that I wasn't able to make something complex programmatically, I had to think about a fundamentally simple concept that can keep people engaged. To this, I thought I should communicate my everyday life through funny gif's. A simple input from user triggers a response with funny gif's and a dialogue.

Process

I brainstormed many ideas before sticking with the current iteration. A major factor in this decision was how complex do I want logic for this bot to be. Originally I wanted to make a bot that updates the user based on google calendar data and syncs up hang out with two friends. However, my limited skills with Ruby programming didn't allow me to pursue this idea.

Product

This bot is really simple with a bunch of if/else logic. Each conversation thread is tied with a specific response. To address my lack of programming skills I had to fundamentally think about a product which has a simple structure but is also super simple for the user to engage and be interested in the conversation. 

Following is a typical code bit from this project. I replicated this bit to map to different responses for a different time in the day.

if body == "Hello"
message = "Hi, I'm YaVi's bot. Nudge me with a time in the day and i'll tell you what he's upto"
media = "https://media.giphy.com/media/l46CjoMYO5n2hQnWE/giphy.gif"

Reflection

This bot feels like one-way communication, I'd like to revisit and design some deeper participation of the user in the conversation. Maybe going deeper into a one-time instance and branching into a more comprehensive conversation around the activity which is currently depicted by gifs.