Outcome

Meet Andy the PicBot

Summary

Who is Andy? 

Andy is a Slack base picture bot who can inspire users with pictures from Behance.

He is a funny and helpful friend who will provide you inspiration picture base on your interests.

What can Andy do?

Andy can help you get inspiration in certain project topic. 

Andy can also help you explore around a specific design field and check out the projects.

Who is Andy for?

Have you ever ran out of ideas during concept generation process of your project? Have you be wondering what a certain design field is for and its corresponding projects? Andy is your guy to talk to.

Workflow

To use PicBot, user start by saying "hi" to Andy. Andy would respond back and provide further instructions on how to use all his features.

User would have the two options:

1.  Get inspiration by product name: enter "inspire + product name" 

2. Explore around a certain design field: enter " search a project in + design field".

Features

Designed Features:

• Check for Existing User: In every interaction check the user is onboarded in our database.
• Onboard a User: Go through the process of onboarding a user
• Send Instructions
• Inspire by Product: can inspire users with picture of related topic.
• Inspire More on Same Product: provide more pictures of previous topic.
• Search by Design Field: allow users to explore around projects from related field.
• Search by Designer: can search specific designer on Behance and reply the profile page of that designer.
• Handle mis-understanding: respond if the bot doesn’t understand what’s being asked
• Help: provide some help information to a user if they need guidance

Implemented Features:

• Onboard a User: Go through the process of onboarding a user
• Send Instructions
• Inspire by Product: can inspire users with picture of related topic.
• Search by Design Field: allow users to explore around projects from related field.
• Handle mis-understanding: respond if the bot doesn’t understand what’s being asked
• Help: provide some help information to a user if they need guidance

Due to limited time and skill set, some desired features have not been able to implemented into this api. For instance, currently, the bot can not provide additional inspiration base on the same topic user previously provided. Further development is expected in the future.

Watch How Andy Works:

Future Work

Instagram API: This bot was originally designed for getting inspiration from Instagram. However, due to restriction on getting authorized by Instagram API, this bot can only perform searches within Behance. Further implementation on searching through Instagram is expected in the future.

Robustness:  Currently, Andy can only recognized some basic error entries from the users. In the future, Andy can handle a lot more situations.  

More Characteristics: Andy was designed to be a funny and silly guy. Currently, he can only perform basic conversations. Further development in building his personality is expected as well.

Reflection

One of my biggest takeaways was not being afraid of tossing one of your idea to chase for another one.  My original design was a complete Instagram base design, and I built my entire workflow around Instagram. However, after wasting days to obtain access to Instagram API, I finally gave up my original idea and look for some similar API that would provide me similar resources. It took me a long time to realize there is lots of opportunities out there. If I could start by researching on variaties of social media base on picture, I would not stuck in one box for so long. Therefore, it is important for designers/developers to think out of the box through out the entire designing process of an application.  

References:

• Instagram Ruby Gem: https://github.com/facebookarchive/instagram-ruby-gem
• Instagram API: https://www.instagram.com/developer/
• Instructions on how to get instagram's access toaken: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22263277/how-to-get-access-token-instagram-api-in-ruby-on-rails
• Tutorial for Instagram API: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfhrKWMSFKU
• Instagram Gem tutorial: https://www.devwalks.com/lets-build-instagram-in-rails-part-1/
• Behance API: https://www.behance.net/dev