Inspiration
We have all been in group conversations (on our favorite messenger app) where someone suggests we plan a trip together, and that starts off a thread with everyone pitching in with their preferences, their limitations, their interests, etc.
Such a thread is usually messy in a sense that there is no particular structure to the conversation which we felt makes finalizing a plan difficult and tedious, which on many occasions would lead to the plan just getting cancelled.
We wondered how we could help a group of people make sense of such a thread and get them closer to a point where they would successfully plan the trip they've been talking about!
What it does
We have come up with a messenger application which uses NLP to understand the context of a trip-planning conversation in real-time and summarizes all discussed options in a concise manner and displays the best deals for those so as to help a group make an informed decision quickly.
How we built it
We used Dialogflow to help us build a structure for a conversation, Pusher for the messaging infrastructure, angular.js for the UI, and node.js server-side to help interface all the components.
Challenges we ran into
Using NLP for conversation analysis. Only one of us had prior knowledge of this. Pulling data from node.js to the front-end in a dynamically reloading section of the page. Using the Expedia APIs.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Getting this to actually work! Using NLP in our project.
What we learned
Cool ideas can transform into POCs in a short period of time. Hackathons are fun and a lot about learning.
What's next for PlanAway
Fixing a few UI-related limitations. Adding more features to the NLP portion of the project.
Built With
- angular.js
- dialogflow
- expedia
- node.js
- pusher
- rest
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