BetterChatter

Chatbot on airline website
Example of a user's flight details
Chatbot conversation topics

Inspiration

We noticed it could be hard for users either in a rush or incompetent with technology to get all the information they need about their flight in a short amount of time. This chatbot will provide the user with all the information they need in one place in a simple manner. Our chatbot is functional as well as conversational, able to talk about various social and global issues in order to raise awareness.

What it does

The chatbot receives inputs from the user and responds with optimal responses after training our artificial intelligence algorithm. To increase accessibility, we also implemented a voice recognition feature. Topics the bot can help with range from flight details and airport maps to raising awareness on global issues and mental problems. Our bot is a multifunctional product that can solve many issues.

How we built it

We used DialogFlow to build the chatbot and we trained the artificial intelligence algorithm with many different user inputs. To get the flight details of each user, we needed to use javascript to extract data from the Firebase database.

Challenges we ran into

At first, we were going to use the Chatterbot Python library with Flask. However, we ran into problems with everyone being able to download all of the necessary technologies and ultimately decided on DialogFlow, which didn't need much setting up. It also was a Google Cloud Product, coinciding with one of the challenges. It was also challenging figuring out how to extract data from a database.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Ultimately, we're proud of developing a working chatbot that gives appropriate responses. We are proud of not only the bot working as a customer service line, but also the positive impact it will leave on society.

What we learned

We learned new technologies such as DialogFlow and Firebase. Furthermore, we learned the process of reading and writing to a database and integrating it with a chatbot.

What's next for BetterChatter

Integrate the actual American Airlines customer database rather than our simulated database, integrate with large social media platforms and common technologies, and implement custom payloads for a more visual experience.