The more scared you are of coding, the lesser you’ll learn.
As the class progressed, and we had worked on our A1 assignments, it was time for an exhibition. We looked forward to presenting our ideas to people who were strangers to this whole thing and to get their feedback. The exhibition went well with TTALKO getting different kinds of feedback. From appreciation about not removing the human from the reception area, to getting constructive feedback on clubbing a few options that were there in our concept, all of the feedback was welcome. Although I did feel like the exhibition could have been a bit longer as people kept pouring in even as the closing time approached. Then again, I do realize that this was just A1 and we can’t give so much time for a raw, low fidelity concept as we have lots to work on and more to learn before we advance to further developing this into something final. Maybe we could have had a final exhibition(which was a part of the plan initially) but it isn’t possible given the way the cycle is planned by the college and the updated timeline.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop us in working towards making a good working prototype at the end of the class, and be somewhere close to what we initially intended to.
From the feedback, there are a few things we have noted, and intend to make changes in the concept note and abstract. The same would be reflected in our later submissions.
As we learn more and more programming, it becomes more and more intriguing and interesting. At this point I look forward to coding different parts of TTALKO using the functions and keywords we have learnt. My groupmate Calvin and I, even tried working on the code for one of TTALKO’s options and the output was decent. But since we wanted to make it better, we decided this would be one of our iterations, and not the final thing.
While we learn more and more of programming, we learn how to put across the questions our chatbot is supposed to ask, in a more humane way. The point is for the chatbot to come across as more natural and approachable, and more human-like. But to think of it, at the end of the day, its a piece of technology, which we have made in a way that it seems like a person. This is because we give it a personality. So how important it is to do so? I think that depends on each person separately. I, personally, feel like technology shouldn’t be personified too much that it becomes such a crucial part that we become inseparable from it and completely depend on a machine that talks to us in a manner that a person would. We created devices and machines that use technology in order to ease our lives, not so that we are enslaved by them.
Then again, I do realize that there are cases where this could be of importance. Conversations which are informal, instead of formal task-based questions, could help someone who doesn’t know how to use technology or is trying to familiarise themselves with something better. Some people would prefer direct, to the point conversation, while others might want it to have an informal tone to it just so that they can ease into the conversation better.
As we keep points like this in mind, we decide to make changes to our chatbot.
When it comes to the coding part, I think there were some parts which got covered too quickly in class, for me to grasp onto. Thus there are things that I know very well now, and there are those I’m still trying to understand. But it doesn’t really scare me or bother me to know that maybe I don’t know a particular part well enough. There’s an abundance of resources available and if I feel that I need to catch up on something, we’re lucky enough to have Google now to help us out in case we’re at our places and need to find the solution for some error we are stuck at. Maybe this doesn’t scare me or bother me too much, because of the minimal coding in HTML and CSS I had done back in time. As someone who spent two years on that, and only understood it a month before my board exams for the same, I did realize that the more scared you are of coding, the lesser you’ll learn. And there’s always different ways to do things. Currently, from as much as we’ve covered, I’ve learnt certain parts well enough to know when there’s an error and how to fix it, the whitespace required between code, etc.
So I think I could say, I’m keen on seeing how we take our chat bot, TTALKO, further.
References-
https://apps.worldwritable.com/tutorials/chatbot/
