Inspiration
I have chosen to build an app to address the homelessness issue in our society. The reason I have chosen to do so is because of how prevalent this issue is today. Solving the issue of homelessness requires 3 main things: donors, volunteers and a willing organisation. A key issue that we have observed is that some people are quite lazy to leave their houses for giving donations to charity; there has been general donor inconvenience. Therefore they simply throw unwanted items away. This can also be said to volunteers who don’t have the time to go to a charity shop. Therefore, an app can be created in order to connect these together. I have decided to create a chatbot using Facebook and more specifically FacebookMessenger. This means that millions of users who are connected on Facebook can more easily donate unwanted goods away by arranging for a pickup of their donations. The organisation may assign a volunteer in a particular radius to pick up these unwanted items and send to the nearest centre. As part of this, the volunteer has goals that they need to meet to get certain rewards. All is connected to a simple and easy to use chatbot on Messenger and a website.
Project Name and Mission Statement
My project name will be Necessity . We take for granted the fact that all of us have a home that we live in but not so often understand how lucky we are. There are many people out there who don’t have a home for a variety of reasons - they live and sleep on the streets while we sleep comfy. Having a home is a necessity! Henceforth, the name.
Mission Statement: It’s our vision to provide the right environment which will help reverse the spiral of homelessness. Our mission is to support all these marginalised individuals , whoever they are, wherever they come from. Our vision is with the aid of digital technology to transform people’s lives for the better. Having a home should not be seen as a luxury, but rather a necessity that affects all people’s rights.
What it does
With chatbots, hitting potential customers/donors is easy by offering required information irrespective of the day or time. ChatBots are also simple and easy to use aimed at all demographics Bots are less prone to errors, hence, the better customer experience can help to establish a better brand. But in my case, I am developing a simple non-profit app. The chatbot should be able to input details about the person, type of item and address of the location for pickup of donated clothes if a pickup of these donations is what the donor would prefer. Therefore the chatbot redirects a request made by the user to the organisation and the organisation will assign this to a volunteer to pick up these donations from the specified location in the UK.
We need to keep in mind that donor could potentially also be volunteers for the organisation. Once again, many people are not willing to sign up and become volunteers in a charity shop; they might have a busy lifestyle. So we have to accommodate for them to making the process of volunteering much easier. Once again, I have decided for these donor (can also refer to them as volunteers for the client organisation) to have access to the chatbot. These volunteers should be able to sign up and wait to receive a verified ID. Therefore from here, whenever they feel like volunteering, they will be able to find donor in a particular radius (e.g. 5 mile radius) e.t.c. and drop it off at the organisation’s nearest centre. From there the charity could either sell the items in a charity shop or otherwise hand it straight over to the homeless. We have also provided the option for restaurants to volunteer and donate unwanted food since quite a lot of food gets wasted at restaurants - for this, I am hoping for a registration process. In addition, if a homeless is reported as having a critical issue such as violence or being hurt, users should be able to report that for welfare; healthcare benefits of the homeless.
How I built it
My website will be using HTML,CSS and NodeJs. The app will use Facebook Messenger. For the integration of the ChatBot, I have decided to utilise ManyChat. It will be hosted on a Heroku Web Server.
The Chatbot
You will get the personalised answers you want with Necessity’s ChatBot and all they need is an account on Facebook/ Facebook Messenger. The language they use, their flow of interaction, donating habits, choices they make are also invaluable data you can use to personalise your homelessness campaigns in the future. This data will not only let you improve your chatbot and create better-engaging narratives, but can also help you with other aspects required. For example, you will be able to create more personalised content that addresses the real issues your customers face - what they want to find out more about with your organisation and even possibly improve upon their recommendations. You will also be able to identify the most common questions they ask and use them to create a solid FAQ page and knowledge base. This humanisation of technology adds depth to the otherwise sterile and frankly boring experience of managing and signing up to become a volunteer or donor. The application becomes less like a tool and more like a team member you are working with to get the job done. Within the chatbot we intend to build, there’s a nice flow; it’s smooth. We are intending on making the user experience more enjoyable through the use of google maps. For example, once a volunteer finds out where they need to go for pickup, the chatbot recommends directions to get to the location using google maps. Who hasn’t used Google Maps? On the location detail page, you can quickly get all the info you need, including hours, menus, directions, top reviews and tips e.t.c about the location for pickup.
The website
In addition to the chatbot, we are planning to host a website to advertise our chatbot to get more people donating. This website will summarise our vision and values amazingly. We have improved UX and UI by having buttons so that the user can return to the main page. Furthermore, our web page will have beautiful animations. The Pages will be short and sweet and provides all the information that a user really requires. We have also promoted our client Shelter; show how both of our values are shared, with the end goal for more users to donate for a good cause, eradicating homelessness.
Overall, our UI/X will be modern, intuitive and easy to use so users want to adopt it quickly. I completed wire-framing and storyboarding.
What's next for Necessity
Our project has a lot of scope for improvement. Some of the features are listed below: .As I have reiterated, the chatbot needs connection to a database and server allowing users to be tracked there. We will be incorporating a proper login/sign up area on the chatbot for revisiting users. Similarly, for restaurants, they may want to sign up and then have volunteers coming everyday at the end of the day to pick up their unwanted food as on a regular basis. .We could include a visual tracking system. Therefore, when volunteers start a journey they can hit a button on the app, and their journey to the specified donor location pickup. This helps to ensure whether everything is in flow. AI and ML algorithms can analyses these patterns and figure out whether everything is alright .We could have an upgrade for a ChatBot overall and we can have a better Natural Language ToolKit (NLTK) which uses Multinomial Naive Bayes as the classic algorithm for text classification and NLP. We can include more sophisticated AI and ML using Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning for the ChatBot. Certain other tools we can use to build our ChatBots better include Watson Assistant by IBM and DialogFlow by Google. Our results from the chatbot would be better, more natural and more accurate. Integrate Stripe API , Google Pay and Apple Pay or other forms of payment options directly to ChatBot or separate web page. We can handle more types of donations such as Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, suited for future changes in currency. .Use Interaction Analytics to Make Chatbots More Conversational. We could develop the website more using a click tracker tool seeing where people spend more time on than others and improve user experience with more features .We could make the website more sophisticated and have more features to raise awareness for homelessness as well as also raising money for charity .We could also implement speech recognition for people who find it hard to type and communicate with the chatbot. We are aiming it with a demographic being many people from a variety of backgrounds. We will implement features that could help for all types of people so no one is disadvantaged. .This idea is not only limited to a national scale. Now that we are using digital technology, we can support many other areas around the world solving homelessness; is not just limited to the UK. Since it is hosted on Facebook and has a website for anyone to access, the charitable organisation can develop more links around the world raising much more money to solve the issue of homelessness around the world. Chatbots can be used wherever, whenever and by whoever they want. It will definitely have a positive impact on society, for donors, volunteers, the charity and most importantly the homeless. .Reporting incidents with the homeless will be developed - for example we can use SOS/999 connections to make quick alerts and actions; as soon as you hit a button. The chatbot can also be developed to give instructions and healthcare questions similar to 999, allowing them to describe the issue and try to resolve the issue asm uch as possible by the time an ambulance comes. Also if there are violence issues.
Final Verdict
Overall, I believe that these idea will have a profound positive impact on address and solving the issue of homelessness. Please access the website in the URL provided and then please hit the ChatBot button on the bottom right to test it out. Please note this is just a prototype and a test ChatBot.
Additional Documentation
I didn't get enough time for making a video. Therefore, I am adding a much more detailed documentation in the upload section. This goes into the specifics of the project I worked on.
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