While researching for my dissertation that looked into AI Chatbots, I realised that the majority of chatbots that exist today are created to cater to commercial interests. Taking in elements from my dissertation, I wanted to extend Tamar’s personality to not only include the audio-visual aspect but also to present itself in a more personal manner to users. While not powered by AI and created specifically in a closed domain, Tamar’s chatbot provides the user with more information on the visual experience and the science behind it. The following are some of the points I kept in mind while designing the conversational flow:
Setting Goals: As mentioned earlier, the prime motive behind including a chatbot to this experience was to extend its form beyond the immediate audio visual experience.
Personality Building: While creating the chatbot, I had ensured that the conversational flow coheres with Tamar’s personality portrayed through the audio narration. The chatbot provided another avenue to add more character to Tamar’s personality.
User Persona: Since it was built within a closed domain, the conversational options had to be limited to only include possible questions that might strike the minds of most users who went through the experience.
Visual aesthetic: Similar to the VR experience, I wanted to ensure that Tamar’s obscure identity is not revealed by using an overly descriptive image, thus the monochrome glitch GIF was used to portray what Tamar looks like.
Mapping the topics: Before coding the chatbot, I used padlet to map out the conversation between Tamar and the user.
Choosing the right tools: My brief experience designing a chatbot for a previous project naturally directed me to using Glitch to programme Tamar. Moreover, as it was a closed domain, glitch seemed like the ideal programme.