Inspiration
As technology becomes growingly pervasive in our daily lives we tend to assume that everyone is somewhat tech savvy. And able to use the internet to find what they need. But one group in particular, is often overlooked: the technologically illiterate elderly. Technology is evolving so fast that its unreasonable to expect them to be able to keep up. Though majority of information online is not necessarily essential to them, information regarding government programs and websites, medical providers, insurance, changes in policies that directly affect them can be found online. The challenge is in accessing that information. Anyone would drown in a sea of information, let alone a technological illiterate elderly. So how do we bridge that gap between our target audience and the internet?
We made a virtual assistant that gives fool-proof step-by-step instructions to any question thrown at it. By engineering its behaviour, we were able to design a ChatGPT based solution that assumes zero tech literacy in its response.
How the solution is special
Our solution specially structures the response into a step-by-step format and answers in a way that is easy to follow, and is able to answer in any language.
What it does
to the user, its a frictionless interface. just type in a question and a tailored answer comes out. These are the steps happening in the background:
- it takes in a question
- it auto translates the text (using Google Translate's API, if not in English, to English before passing onto the next function as a prompt)
- it runs the prompt through a modified ChatGPT by setting a system message describing its purpose, objective, target audience, and behaviour
- modified ChatGPT returns a fool-proof step-by-step guide to helping the user complete a task (i.e. create a YUU rewards account) in English
- translates the ChatGPT response to the language initially used
How we built it
We leveraged the power of large language models to convey fool-proof instructions to our target group in a way that they can understand. This is different from going into ChatGPT's website and entering a prompt, because our code already presets an expected template for the output with tech illiteracy in mind. We also incorporated google translate (through google cloud's API) to ensure that the question and answer works in ALL languages.
Challenges we ran into
The code uses google cloud computing to access the google translate API. Setting up google cloud was challenging as it was significantly more complicated than making a regular API call. We initially wanted to include a speech to text and vice versa module, so that even someone who can't read or write will be able to use our tool. It worked, but it was extremely slow, so we removed it.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We made a useful tool that any tech illiterate person could use, and it works in every language. This helped us create a more inclusive solution.
What we learned
We learned how to utilise the google cloud console, and at the same time gained more insight into inclusivity in Singapore and the challenges that technologically illiterate elderly face.
What's next for happy3friends
Should we pursue developing this project further, some functionalities we could add is to use Serper and Browserless (API services) to search and scrape the internet for the latest information relevant to them, followed by using summary AIs to simplify, convey and guide technologically illiterate elderly in the fast moving technological world. This is highly scalable as it is a purely software solution. Any limitations in computing abilities or server hosting can be solved by hosting the code on cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud. As for the business model, we can adopt the standard 7 or 30 day free trial to attract users and then have a paid subscription plan.
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