My Chatbot
What would it be like to chat with a fictional character in real life?
Themes: chatbots, fictional characters, creative writing, and user testing
Background
A chatbot (short for chat robot) is a computer program that can have a conversation with a human, using either text or speech.
Chatbots can serve many purposes including help desk support, personal shopping assistant, healthcare adviser, tutor, and companion. You may have even interacted with one without knowing it.
There are many apps that allow non-developers to create simple chatbots that work off of pre-written keywords. When a user interacts with the robot, the program looks for keywords to see how it should respond back.
Project
Create a chatbot modeled after one of your favorite fictional characters from a book, movie, play, tv show, or game.
Your chatbot will need to be designed to respond to possible user questions and to also start and keep conversations going. Think about your character's perspective on life, their likes and dislikes, their humor and quirks, their experiences, and anything else that could be used to have an interesting conversation. The end goal is for the user to feel like they're having a conversation with the real character.
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Here is a sample conversation that someone might have with Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.
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User: Hi
Eeyore: Hi
User: How are you?
Eeyore: Not so good... it feels like a Monday
User: No... it's Tuesday
Eeyore: I think it might be the weather. Is it raining or cloudy?
User: No it's sunny
Eeyore: Then maybe I'm just missing my tail again. Can you help me find it?