​Introducing Dobby — the first command-operated bot

Today we would like to present a little sneak peek of our new bot — Dobby. Because bots are still a mostly unexplored territory and because we think we might have come with something pretty bold and sweet, we’re hoping to spur a lively discussion with this post.

So what is Dobby? Dobby is a bot. But there are many bots these days. So what makes Dobby special? Here’s a quick rundown:

• Dobby has it’s own app that gives it more power than a typical chatbot.
• It’s also operated by simple commands, instead of “natural language”
• It talks to your existing apps, so you can connect all your cloud apps, shopping apps and on demand services.
• And it’s programmable, so you can teach it new tricks.

The Dobby App

We tried many chatbots out there and we always had the feeling that something was missing. The chat interface is great for conversations, but it lacks some basic UI elements and so the interaction with bots is oftentimes messy. You ask something, than you wait, the bot replies with options, than you select an option and on and on.

When we started designing the Dobby App we thought: what would a bot interface look like if it had no limitations:

Live previews

The first major differentiator are live previews to your queries. Whenever you start interacting with Dobby, it gives you instant feedback to what you’re typing. This makes the whole experience much more accurate.

Rich results

The second thing is that by removing the limitations of the chat interface, we were able to design richer results. Images are displayed in beautiful galleries, list can have image and text previews, things like the weather have their own visual result card.

Dobby can be a chatbot too

Sometimes it’s handy to have Dobby with you in your favorite chat app. That’s why we are working on deploying Dobby in all the major chatbot platforms available. You’ll be able to bring all of Dobby’s powers into Slack, Messenger, Telegram and more.

Back to commands

Commands were the first computer interface. That’s how you got your computer to do stuff for you in the old days. We realized that despite the huge advances in natural language processing, it’s still faster and more accurate to talk to your bot with commands. But we didn’t want to ship Dobby with a 100 page manual. To get the best of both worlds — the speed and accuracy of commands and the ease of use and learning of natural language — we created smart suggestions.

We believe that on desktop, smart commands are a better alternative to natural language processing or voice recognition, since it takes less strokes to get the message across and is more precise.

Smart suggestions

Smart suggestions guide you while talking to Dobby so you always know what to type next without making a mistake or getting into a dead end in the conversation. Dobby will also remember your most used commands and suggest them first.

Dobby talks to your apps

Thanks to powerful integrations, Dobby can connect to your Dropbox or Google Drive and assist you with looking up files. It can connect to your JIRA or Trello and help you with project management or it can hook up to your Uber app and order you a ride when you need it.

Teach Dobby new tricks

Even though we taught Dobby a few tricks already, we realized that there is now way in the world, we can teach it everything. So rather than making Dobby a closed system, we decided to open it up to everyone. With the Dobby API, you can take full advantage of the entire Dobby App, including the live previews and rich results. You can plug in your own apps, or program with popular public APIs. We will be releasing a documentation soon.

What can Dobby do today

Dobby is still in private beta and we are not quite ready to open the gates. We are working hard to make Dobby useful to all of you. There are 4 main categories of things we are teaching Dobby right now.

Keeping you organized

Dobby can pull information from connected apps and tell you your agenda for the day as well as the tasks you have in your favorite to-do list.

If you need to arrange a meeting between two or more people, Dobby will pull up all your available times and share them with your invitees.

Dobby is also smart at reminding you about stuff. Whatever it is — a result that Dobby finds for you, or just a note you typed, you can set a reminder for that specific item.

Because Dobby is a big fan of Pomodoros, it will track them for you.

Channeling your productive side

Dobby is great at helping you stay productive. Just jot down a note, or drop a picture in the app and Dobby will keep it for you. If you decide to save it somewhere later, Dobby will send it to any of you connected apps (like Evernote, Asana, Conflunece, Dropbox etc.)

Keeping up with all your work can be hard, so we taught Dobby to remember what you worked on last. Just ask for your recent stuff, and Dobby will pull up all your latest tasks, documents, events and notes.

It’s also a time saver when you need to check your app performance in New Relic or get your retention rate from Mixpanel. It will even pull up an issue from GitHub and manage your Heroku apps.

Your personal assistant

Dobby will double as your personal assistant. It will call you an Uber for a specific time in the day, figure out if AirBnB or a hotel is cheaper for your next trip, order your frequent essentials like paper for the printer or start a playlist from Spotify.

Helping you with small everyday things

Dobby can post on Twitter or Facebook, saving you time and keeping you away from the endless social feeds. It can also let you know if you need an umbrella or shorts tomorrow and best of all — it will order you favorite pizza for those late nights at the office — ehm movie nights with friends!

What’s next

We are just getting started with Dobby and that’s why we need your feedback and support to make Dobby the most useful and versatile bot in space. You can sign up for our private beta at www.getdobby.com.

Our hope is to hear your thoughts whether positive or negative. They will help us move in the right direction. You can let us know right bellow this post, or hit us at hello@dobby.com.

Enjoy & share 🎉