arisan-bot

Inspiration

Arisan is one-of-a-kind culture found amongst housewives in Indonesia. They form this small community called Arisan. They regularly hold a gathering where they can talk with one another. But, what really differentiates Arisan with other communities is that in every gathering, different member of Arisan will receive a payment from everyone else. The money collected will then go to one member of the Arisan. Whether the receiver is random or predetermined, it's usually the collective decision of the Arisan based on who's really in need at that time. This is ultimately a form of forced saving for every member of the Arisan. I was inspired by this very unique culture of my home country to help grow the community beyond the technological era. Facebook Messenger is a very popular communication platform among housewives in Indonesia. Therefore, I really hope that Arisan Bot can be easily adopted and can be the ultimate solution to help the community thrive.

What it does

Arisan Bot is a chatbot that aims to help the management of Arisan to be easier and more efficient. Arisan Bot allows one to manage the group through Facebook Messenger, enabling the members of the community to schedule the gathering more easily, and also allowing the gathering holder to manage the money more efficiently.

How I built it

I built this product from scratch with no boilerplate. Initially I wanted to use wit.ai as NLP provider for Arisan Bot, but I didn't think it would be easier for users to write whole sentences instead of simple multiple choice-based navigation. I use NodeJS as the server. Initially I meant to use MongoDB or Firebase as the database solution, but unfortunately the time is very limited. This product directly uses Facebook Messenger API to send and receive messages. The project is deployed to my private server using Docker.

Challenges I ran into

First and foremost, I am not familiar with how Facebook Messenger API works, as this is my first time using it. I needed time to explore what I can and cannot do, and decide how I would leverage the API to build my chatbot. Another challenge I face is I didn't have much time as I am a part of another project in this hackathon. However, if I have more time, I would have finished a complete MVP of my product.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I was able to write a moderately complex project from scratch in just a few hours. It's not complete, yes, but I think the prototype is enough to showcase pretty much all the things that Arisan Bot should be able to do.

What I learned

I learned a lot about the capabilities of Facebook Messenger Chatbot API. I also learned a little bit about the capabilities wit.ai, the chatbot NLP provider. I also learned that Arisan is a very unique community culture from my home country that I can't find anywhere else in the world. This is a very eye opening experience. I realized that no matter how much I love America, I love my home country even more.

What's next for arisan-bot

To further complete the experience of Arisan Bot, I plan to add calendar integration for easy scheduling. I also plan to enable payment through Arisan Bot. However, it's not going to be easy, as people in Indonesia are not used to cashless payment. But we're getting there.

Built With

• docker
• javascript
• messenger
• shell