Hey Chef

Alexa VUI Skills

A Chatbot to help people determine their cravings using Alexa VUI skills blueprints.

2020

  • 2-4 weeks

  • Dialogue flowchart Alexa skills

  • Solo Project

WHAT IS A CHATBOT?

Chatbot is an AI that simulates a human conversation for a consumer to interact in order to obtain quick information.

It is am important tool for a site and company because it acts as streamline between the consumer and industry. Chatbots can improve customer engagement as well as their experience by offering recommendations, customer service, and analyzing your specific need or request. It helps boost efficiency and can easily resolve issues and can use the users data to enhance their marketing.

OBJECTIVE

The objective for this project is to develop a chatbot based on Amazon’s VUI skills assignment using blueprints. Thus creating, Hey Chef which is based on the previous Interactive Media assignment from the Alexa Voice Interface project (included in same case study).

To contribute to the VA with a more visual interface to adjust to the individuals needs and preferences, it was recognized that the VA was lacking a visual component and didn't cater to those who are visual learners. When approaching this design, I wanted to implement the same concept-where you ask what you want or don't want, curating recipes, showing you the endless options in store for you.

PROCESS

Since most of the research and framework was done on the previous assignment, I focused on developing a new conversation flowchart and researched similar bots to see how users interacted with them.

The only notable chatbot with the similar concept was Food Network. They connect their chatbot with Facebook messenger and can filter your search by ingredients, names of the chefs, meal type, or emotional response. This gave me a good framework to start off my design and found ways in how I could implement my idea with the peoples needs.

Additionally, chatbots at other services like Sephora was viewed and how they were able to personalize their chatbot to the users history. It was interesting how you were able to submit a photo and have the chatbot recognize what you're looking for.

DEMO

PROJECT RETROSPECTIVE

The most challenging aspect of project was actually designing a chatbot. At times, I came across a lot of discrepancies and a lot of unknowns. The question that came up lot was how do I keep the conversation short and to the point but also offer a lot of options but also not overwhelm the user with too much information.

A lot of that was to offer a substantial amount of options for the user, but also ask how can the bot help. If the bot isn't offering the right option right off the bat, then instead of offering a bunch up front, or giving option after option after option, give the user the opportunity to help the bot refine their answer.

Overall, the journey to create a human-like conversation was difficult. There was fear going into this, and trying to understand the line between the bot sound either too formal or too informal. Furthermore, think I was able to tackle some the personal challenges I had with designing the chatbot and made efficient choices.

Check out my Alexa VUI Case Study for more background on this project!