A Botful Life
When I was young, I used to hate Indian Railways website. Booking a ticket on IRCTC was one of the toughest feats to achieve on the web. I always wondered whether the people who built it ever used it to understand how tough it was to use the website.
I use a grocery ordering app to order stuff for home and office. Every now and then I have the same feeling about the app. I am pretty sure the developers have never experienced what it is like to be using their product.
The other day, I was sitting with my team, pondering on some user feedback we had collected over the last weeks and discussing on what we should prioritise and what not. We debated on what would make sense and what not. We hypothesised on what makes buying stuff easy on Chabots, why users would seek support on Chatbots, why someone would prefer using a certain kind of bot instead of an app. All the conclusions seemed right, it all seemed plausible. Afterall, these were the topics we had been discussing for all these months making an extensive bot-builder. We had all our research, we had the numbers, everything looked right. But, there was one thing that bothered us.
The feedbacks we received told us something.
We did all the big things right, but there were those small little things that never crossed our minds. Those small things that make the big thing look much better.
Why did we not think of those on our own? It was not that we did not ‘use’ our bots. We ran most bots through our team so they could get initial feedback and improve before release. Then why would the complete team miss out on those simple things? An then, I had that familiar feeling from the past.
I am a Chatbot developer and I don’t use Chatbots! Now ‘using’ is not ‘testing’ or ‘reviewing’. It’s about making bots a part of my routine life. Using bots instead of apps to get stuff done.
And so, I planned to live a Botful life! (at least for the next few months)
I will make a few bots a part of my life and see how I feels to use them, what are things that bother me and what are the things I like. As I do that, I will jot down my experiences of the big and small details in this blog for everyone to learn from.
For the first steps, I am initiating a poll in the bot community for suggestions on what bots to use for value adds in routine life. I would love some suggestions in the comments.
A small note about me : I am a typical engineer, lazy, clumsy, enthusiastic. I love food, sleep, games, coding. I like to be updated with world around politics, sports, science and specifically chatbots. I love travelling but I mostly dream about it and hardly get a chance to actually step out.
Some bot categories I think can be useful are :
- Productivity (tasks, reminders, coordination)
- On Demand Entertainment
- News
- Grocery Ordering!
- Games?
