Hope for Chat

In this age every person has experienced a chatbot in some way or the other. People encounter them on web sites, social media and even on your smartphone. Say hello to Siri, Alexa, to name a few. This project was an experience into the world of chatbots.

The Project:

American Students Assistance is a company which provides financial assistance to the students. It provided different tools for help on the website. The product team wanted to add a quick assistance tools to help with the calls to the call centers. On research we discovered that there were many repetitive questions and solutions that did not need a councillor to be engaged in. The IT team suggested to launch a chatbot assistant that could help in this task. We were given 3 months time to finish and launch the chatbot.

The Team:

This whole project was developed in house with two backend developer, one UX designer / developer and one content writer. The backend developers developed the chatbot software prototypes with test data.

My Role: User Experience Designer and front end developer. My job was to create a personality of the chatbot, following the best practices. I had to create an icon and redesign the page where the chatbot would be added.

• Chatbot personality
• Chatbot Icon
• Design the webpage to add the chatbot
• Add the chatbot on the page

Initial thoughts and discussions:

I came with two different personality types for the chatbot. A friendly yet professional councillor versus a game like chatbot who will make a fun game like discussion in the career advice. Created two illustrations to get some inspiration running on the table. The colours were ASA brand colours.

Since this was the first version we were launching we went with the safer choice of the friendly yet professional councillor.

• Councillor Hope
• Warrior Hope

Research:

Researched the best practices and the ways to build the personality of the chatbot. The way the chatbot would behave and answer in different situations.

As the team moved forward with the text and backend development I came up with different logos for the chatbot. Wanted the logo to look human like but was contemplating the concept of technology in it.

• Modern friendly Hope
• The Pixel Hope
• The Savey Hope

The savey Hope looked to plastic, unfriendly and unconnected to the user so did not go with her. The pixel hope looked a little to programmed which is was not what we wanted. The modern friendly Hope is the one which was more human, inline with the brand, attentive and young. The logo for Hope was chosen.

The page design:

The website had a main dashboard which showed the content. A right rail which listed down the important actionable items and support. I designed and added the chatbot in the right rail. Made a few changed in the logo to make it cleaner and less over powering on the page.

The chatbot was launched in September of 2017. It was advertised on Youtube. The chatbot had brought in lot of traction to the website and was well received.