Conversate

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  Convo The Gorilla.

Inspiration

We wanted to create something for those who are new to the English language and for those with learning disabilities to aid in the readability of certain text. We started out focusing on the translation of conversational language, and eventually we created a text summarization tool, which we all agreed would be equally beneficial.

What it does

Conversate is a chrome extension with the built purpose of summarizing large walls of dense text into easier to understand sentences. It extracts the most important parts from the input text, summarizes these points, and outputs them for the user to read.

How we built it

This extension was built with vanilla JavaScript for the frontend and python for the backend. For the textual analysis, the Microsoft Azure language and cognitive services API was used to extract the most important parts of a large piece of text using Microsoft's artificial intelligence capabilities.

Challenges we ran into

Our original plan of translating conversational words or slang terms would have required the creation of our own data set to train a machine learning model (there were no prepared data sets for this online). This simply could not have been accomplished in the 24 hours we were given, so we had to pivot and change our vision. Also, some features listed in the azure documentation for the language API (such as abstract summarization) were test features that we could not get approved access to within the time constraints. We also created a text-to-speech bot that read the output back to the user, but ultimately decided to not use it due to useability issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of the most challenging portions of the process was getting the backend to work. We were having trouble accessing the text field input, analyzing it, and creating the output, but eventually we were able to. We also learned how to list an extension in the chrome web store, and now can proudly say that we have created one.

What we learned

We learned how to utilize a cloud service for a practical purpose, and also how to create a chrome extension. This, combined with our prior knowledge of JavaScript and python, made for a great learning experience. But most importantly, we had to remember that creating anything of quality within 24 hours is quite difficult. We hope our project reaches the standards required and the ones we have set for ourselves.

What's next for Conversate

Right now, conversate is pending review for acceptance by the chrome web store. Once it is listed, we would want to incorporate more features, like the conversational language translation mentioned before, or more abstract (as opposed to extractive) summarization. Both of these things require training models and creating data sets, which we did not have time for in 24 hours. Overall, we want to improve access to information for all people.

Built With

• azure
• css3
• html5
• javascript
• python