Talkable Moments

Inspiration

“You have failed this date!” If this is a phrase you have heard in the past, fear no more, Talkable Moments is here to help. Talkable Moments is a bot with a variety of quests to help you explore your local city. These quests could be to find the top dessert bars for date night, live in the history of famous attractions like Navy Pier with the family, or to explore an experiential retail store on the Mag Mile. No need to put on your quiver to go on these quests, just follow the clues on screen such as taking a picture of a statue to get your next clue. Along your journey you might just discover some new favorite spots.

What it does

Talkable Moments is a chat bot that allows anyone to discover local places through a quest. Questers can explore places like Navy Pier through a story that takes place through the messaging medium. Talkable Moments also gives local businesses and brands an opportunity to offer paid quests. For example, the AT&T store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago can showcase all of their hard work they took to create a fantastic experience with a quest to explore their offerings and the history of innovation. We can even work with TV shows like HBO’s Ballers to offer special quests for different NFL cities.

By using a chat bot, we are a part of a medium the vast majority of people feel comfortable with and likely already have an app to go on one of our quests. According to Pew Research, 97% of U.S. Adults text weekly compared to 27% that use Snapchat. Apps like Hooked and Yarn have already shown that people do enjoy chat as a medium to consume stories, Talkable Moments just takes this one step forward by allowing questers to live inside the story.

How I built it

Built a basic Facebook Messenger bot using AWS Lambda. Google Maps API is used to get location information. Artificial Intelligence is at the heart of the Talkable Moments experience. Amazon Rekognition handles image processing and Dialogflow is used for natural language processing so that the questers can have a real conversation with Talkable Moments. Finally took some time for the design of the bot.

The web app to build quests is made with React.

Challenges I ran into

The main challenge was figuring out the design. To be honest, this is something I am still working on. I also need to still keep working on the image recognition and make it more accurate.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

First time I thought about design when it comes to AI.

What's next for Talkable Moments

Keep working on the design of Talkable Moments and launch. Then work on finding a local business or brand to help drive engagement with their business. Also create quests for more than just Chicago. Eventually I want to explore creating quests for festivals and other events.