Dirac

Dirac responding to weather and locale data in the desktop interface.
Dirac with the tip game, on the mobile interface.
Dirac can answer some very advanced questions not commonly found on popular search engines like Google.

Inspiration

Banking is difficult. Many young college students struggle to get a hold of their financial status because they don't have an easy way to access information and learn important skills. Actions such as finding the nearest ATM and paying friends should be quicker and more efficient.

We chose Dirac as a name because of his great contributions to the world of science. In the near future, we wish for this program to live up to his name, and become a source for a wealth of information that keeps growing every day.

What it does

Dirac puts together some very important features needed in any mobile device: quick, simple payments, locating the nearest ATM, and simple yet important daily commands.

How I built it

Flask, with python and JS. Integrated many APIs, such as Google Translate API, Wolfram API, and several Machine Learning conversational bots, as well as various custom-build interfaces, both in server and client-side scripting.

Challenges I ran into

The financial literacy exercises had to be specific to the client, which caused the code to be more difficult to handle per each client. It was difficult to design a single web app that would be responsive to all screens, regardless of specifications.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We're proud of the fact that we were able to achieve a professional and advanced-looking interface with some fairly advanced features in such a short period of time. A wealth of information is available to people who chat with Dirac, and the bot improves the more it is used.

What I learned

We learned how to use Python and Flask to serve a website, as well as how to integrate several APIs into a conversational interface. We also learned how to use CSS and HTML to create responsive, cross-platform applications.

What's next for Dirac

We hope to bring Dirac to more platforms other than the web app, such as mobile native apps, slack bots, and facebook messenger bot. Additionally, adding a more intelligent sentiment analysis API to better understand and take feedback from the user is expected to be implemented.ML features could be made more efficient. Voice input is also a priority, in order to facilitate the transfer of information.