Outcome

Intention

Sometimes when designers experience creativity block, thinking outside of the box may help them get creative juice flowing again. That is why I wanted to create a bot that can inspire designers by giving them creativity exercises or sharing with them inspirational quotes from other fellow designers. 

Context

I pulled inspiration from a Google action called Creative Coach. It can give users an exercise in photography, drawing, writing or design to support users when they want to get creative. I found this to be simple yet effective. It solves one problem but solves it quite well. 

At the same time, I looked into books and online resources that talk about overcoming creativity block. "Conceptual blockbusting" is a book I referred to heavily for my project. One of the chapters introduces "perceptual blocks" and how they "prevent the problem-solver from clearly perceiving either the problem itself or the information needed to solve the problem." I used some exercises from the book for my bot. 

I also pulled inspiration from an article on UX Planet. The article collects answers from 20 designers for the question: how to get over being creatively blocked.

Process

I started by making a function matrix, a conversation flow and a paragraph of my bot's personality to help me visualize what my bot will be doing. 

Function matrix

Conversation flow

Drawing out a conversation flow allowed me to examine the logic and check if there was any feature missing from the scope. It was also a great reference for me throughout the time when I was writing the code.  

A short writing about the bot's personality

Creative Juice bot wants to give designers, especially UX designers, inspirations when they are feeling stuck with their creative projects. He is friendly, reliable, and humble. He loves sharing what he knows and what he found inspiring with other designers. When a user approaches him, he knows that the user needs some creative juice to get going. He respects that and may respond something like: “Good to see you, buddy.” He also cherishes long-term relationships. 

After getting a good sense of how my bot works, I started to build the code. The biggest challenge for me is to randomize the exercise/quotes for users and make sure they don't get the same content. At first, I thought about using database, but after I explained my concept to the instructor, I was suggested to use csv file instead. So I created two csv file, one for creativity exercises, and one for quotes.

This section of code was used to read into a csv file. Each row in the file is treated as an array. 

 Another challenge I encountered was to differentiate the two "yes" a user may reply. The solution comes in storing sessions. 

Product

Creative Juice Bot was built using Ruby Sinatra. It was deployed on Heroku and used Twilio as a service to send out SMS. It helps designers get inspired when they experience creative blocks by giving them creativity exercise or tips from other fellow designers. 

Starting a conversation and giving users options:

Creativity exercise:

Tips from other designers: 

Reflection

Scoping a project has always been something I struggled with. Right at the beginning of the project, I spent a lot of time trying to find a theme that I wanted to work on. If I were to do this again, I would focus on only one aspect, either creativity exercise or sourcing inspirational sites, and optimize the experience for that chosen aspect.

Adding an auto reminding feature will make this bot more useful. For example, the bot can send a designer a friendly notification every afternoon to see if he/she needs some creativity boost. Asking a user to translate the exercise to paper is not ideal. I debated a lot when I came across the exercise. However, I didn't find any exercise that can be done solely on-screen. Another workaround to this problem could be sending the user an email with the print-ready exercise.

Overall, I am happy that I took the course. It is only a start to coding, but I am now more confident to read and write code. I am sure the next bot I build will be more robust.