Creating My Bot as a Non-Developer
First, if I am not a developer, who am I?
I am a soon-to-be college graduate who studied both Business and Economics during the last four years. My studies and experiences have revolved around Marketing, which is what I am passionate about career-wise. Recently, I became fascinated with user experience and user interface, but I have not gone beyond reading articles about UX and UI on Medium. I can edit HTML by playing around with the code until I get my desired results, but my technical abilities don’t really go further than that as of now.
If I currently do not have advanced technical skills, how did I build a bot?
Last month, I read an article by Esther Crawford about how she turned her resume into a chatbot.
I played around with her bot and instantly was hooked into the world of bots. The potential that bots have to help everyday people and businesses! Also, how cool would it be if there were chatbots of our favorite celebrities or characters? I could talk to the Francis Underwood bot for hours.
In the article, Esther outlines how she created her bot, and I mimicked the process to create my own. It took me a bit longer than expected to set everything up. In addition to trying to figure out how to create a bot, I had to familiarize myself with the platforms used (e.g. Github and Heroku) in order to fully understand what was going on. Keep in mind that these websites were created for developers. The terminology used throughout them, therefore, are used with the assumption that everyone on the websites knows what they mean. I, a non-technical person, occasionally felt like I was reading the complex language of absolute gibberish.
The most challenging part of setting my bot up? Troubleshooting. I found myself saying out loud at one point, “Troubleshoot? I can barely correct-shoot!” After researching for solutions online, I found clues that could help, pieced them together, and fixed the problems using Terminal. Who knew an application I’ve never opened on my laptop before would be so handy? I sure didn’t!
Numerous syntax errors later, the final product was complete.
Hi, I’m LisaBot
LisaBot allows people to get to know me in an interactive way. It shows what a typical one-page resume and LinkedIn profile cannot: personality. Because I wrote all of LisaBot’s preprogrammed responses, as people engage with the bot, they get an idea of what my personality is like.
After finishing LisaBot, I shared it with my personal network and received a lot of great feedback. I tracked (more like creeped on) each conversation to see how people were using LisaBot, which conversation paths they went down, and what issues they had. I was as intrigued with people’s conversations with LisaBot as much as they were entertained by the bot.
Lessons Learned
Even though LisaBot is currently less than a week old, I’ve learned many things while creating it and after allowing others play with it. Here are just a few of those lessons for those of you who want to build your own bots to consider:
1. Everyone is Secretly Weird
While interacting with LisaBot, people did not realize that I could see the conversations they were having. How people behaved when they thought no one was looking was quite interesting to observe.
Some had no censors at all, and LisaBot didn’t know how to respond to them. Even as the creator, I did not know how what to say because I was taken off guard. With this in mind, one of the next steps to improve LisaBot for a better user experience is to prepare it for people’s weird nature by equipping the bot with more responses for these specific scenarios.
2. Where Would I Be Without Spreadsheets?
Quick tip for newbie bot-builders: use a spreadsheet to help you organize your conversation paths.
While brainstorming ideas for the conversation paths, I would jump from writing about my work experience to my favorite class to my music guilty pleasure. A spreadsheet gave me the freedom to move around and create as many conversation paths as I wanted without the increased risk of losing track of it all.
3. People Don’t Know About Bots
Overall, people were fascinated with LisaBot because it’s something that they have not seen before; however, this implies something more than just novelty.
Even though there have been several conversations revolving around bots and how they can be used, those of us who have been following these conversations sometimes forget that a majority of the population have no idea what a bot is and how to engage with it.
LisaBot provides structured messages that people can click on to help them conduct the conversation. Behind the scenes, these structured messages are keywords that have preprogrammed responses. Alternatively, they could type out their response and converse that way, as long as the responses are keywords that LisaBot comprehends. Many didn’t understand this and did their own things.
This demonstrates that before bots can be widely accepted and used, people need a little hand-holding, at least during the first couple of times that they use a bot.
4. The Importance of Human Connection
One of my favorite quotes is,
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
One of the biggest challenges for bots is mimicking human-to-human interaction. Bots can say and do things based on their programming, but how can the uniqueness of personal connections be taught to a bot?
I wanted to make a user’s experience with LisaBot resemble an experience they would have if it was me they were chatting to. Instead of an image of a robot, I opted for a cartoon version of me as LisaBot’s profile picture to make people sort of feel like they were talking to a real person.
I also tried to create moments that would make people smile and laugh throughout a conversation, especially through the use of gifs.
5. Never Lose Your Curiosity and Desire to Learn
After I graduate in a couple of weeks, I will not be able to access with ease the amount of diverse knowledge that is available on a college campus. Even though I have spent over 80% of my life so far in school, I will miss being a full-time student.
Just because I will no longer being a full-time student doesn’t mean I won’t continue being a lifetime student. Whether it is about marketing or developing bots, I intend on continuing my education throughout the years ahead.
I believe that one of the worse things you can do to yourself is lose your drive to learn. This causes you to be stagnant, and as the world changes around you, you won’t be able to do anything other than watch it change as you stay exactly where you’ve been.
Keep your natural curiosity alive. Challenge yourself to learn something that is a 180 of what you’re used to.
Thank you to Esther Crawford for sharing with our community how she created her bot!
