Darcie an Advocate for Accessibility:
See Darcie at work at darcie.me
Receiving messages, reviewing notification from social media, finding the best ethnic fusion restaurant, or even what time a business closes, can be a blurred bag of essential and non-essential inquiries that someone makes.
The list expands every day, and the need for personal assistant software has become more of a demand as time passes.
The development of computer systems capable of answering questions posed in natural language is now a realization with virtual assistance. There are several virtual assistants out on the market, Google’s, “OK Google,” Amazon’s “Alexa,” and Apple’s “Siri,” to name a few, run advanced artificial intelligence, and machine learning models to help users manage daily lifestyle — and they are getting smarter.
All these virtual assistants have access to your device & connected services, but still, they have a limit in the range of information that they can serve. And they fail completely to serve certain populations. What if the user doesn’t have access to the internet? Or access to a personal smart device with data capabilities? It is a dark reality that some people face daily, and a primary concern for people experiencing homelessness.
That is where Darcie is placed in this relay, solving the most significant technical challenges faced by those experiencing homelessness. Darcie advocates for those that may not have access to wifi, visually impaired, and have difficulties managing a smartphone.
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How Does Darcie Accomplish Those Goals?
All an individual has to do is call a toll free number from anywhere, and it will direct them to the community services in their city.
Darcie was born out of the spiraling housing crisis that is happening in San Francisco. We partnered with Sheltertech, a non-profit organization whose primary mission is to improve access to the internet and to build digital services for people experiencing homelessness.
When you call Darcie, Nexmo Vonage Voice API captains the dialog for the user to give clear questions and answer when being used. Vonage voice agent is what the user interacts with and guides the user in an experience that leaves them with the information that is essential for there day to day lives. With Nexmo Vonage Darcie is a voice that champions for the displaced.
Darcie utilizes data from the AskDarcel database, the ShelterTech product built upon hundreds of research hours and powering the SF Service Guide, which provides step by step guides for many of the most common problems faced by people at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
Darcie’s service orchestration engine allows dialog flow and assistance with the help of IBM Watsons Assistant and Algolia harness quick, relevant, scalable, and lightning-fast search of any data that AskDarcel digital services provided. In a quick question and answer session with Darcie, one can find showers and rest stops for homeless recipients in the metropolitan San Francisco area.
What differentiates Darcie from other virtual assistants is its accessibility via a traditional telephone call and careful question & answer flow. Rather than modern virtual assistants which are very open-ended & require users to know how to act with the technology, Darcie starts the conversation and asks questions to quickly guide the user to resources that can help them.
Add in the ease and speedily given information provided by modern technology, a real individual gets immediate help in San Francisco.
Darcie allows extreme mobility and scalability, being modularized to attach to any social services database schema, nationally or internationally. While the initial prototype has been set up for access in English, Darcie, which is powered by Google Cloud Platform and Vonage, who have both an extensive language lexicon, that can be easily expanded to speak any language.
Darcie can also store and send an SMS to anyone’s phone or any phone an individual wants. It later stores those data and dialog in metrics that allow social services to articulate the most requested services and location of those services.
Our team is focused on the accessibility for users in our community and society and we strive to keep creating applications and services for people to get the information they need.
