Chatbot that overturned 160k parking fines now helping refugees claim asylum
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/11/chatbot-l... [1]
I did similar work with Hello.Vote for voter registration, and there are so many offline forms that could be improved with a bit of web/messaging UI. Also see snapfresh.org for a CfA project that helps find places that accept EBT cards.
Other than chat bots, just making forms and bureaucratic processes more accessible online seems like an arena that still has vast potential for improvement.
It may be different with U.S. and Canada, though - things are a bit easier when asylum applicants are not coming over unguarded land borders.
(FWIW, I've assisted an immigrant, an old woman, in composing her complaint to the national courts and ECHR. The system is rigged against honest applicants because of the overload caused by more or less frivolous cases. We lost, too, technically, but she was in too bad shape to be deported so eventually got permission to stay.)
However, particularly for European governments, it's now becoming visible that there is a selection to be made: you can have completely open borders, or you can have a welfare state, but you can't have both.
Depressing future scenarios like this make me miss the 1980ies, when popularly feared terrible futures had clearly good solutions ("don't blow up the planet") instead of a choice between two evils.
It does not have to be like that, it is just what you believe.
Does bettering oneself mean the same thing for economic migrants as it does for Europeans, in your mind? I gather from your comment that it means "attaining greater material wealth" for economic migrants. What does it mean for Europeans? Does it mean sharing their material wealth with the less fortunate, at their expense and the expense of their progeny?
at least I don't have to wait for the mod to +v me. we'll have a chatbot for that
In this case, I'm sure people would prefer answering these questions directly to a person, but that's obviously way higher cost and the point of this system is that you don't have to hire a lawyer. Given that direct human conversation isn't an option, and given the evidently common aversion to normal web interfaces, I'm not particularly surprised that some people might find this valuable.
From a PR perspective, it would seem huge. I doubt he would have had a write up on the guardian or this much exposure on HN if it was a web form instead of a chat bot.
It should give us all some food for thought when we give consideration on how to market our work.
Computers are closer to the first mental model than the last---they don't understand the full context of any situation, and when it comes to things like 'understanding' your typical app is programmed to a level less than the average 4 year old.
If I had an app to write and learned that customers were most likely to buy it with a UI that involved waving the phone and grunting at it, I'd just shrug and build it that way.
It might not be as efficient for a user who has memorized keystrokes to work through, but more effective for first-time users.
That can't be the whole story... A web app could have been at least as accessible. I guess Facebook offers APIs that make developing this kind of application easier than looking for other frameworks or starting from scratch.
Think about all the "obvious" steps involved (text input, message chain display, page/server communications), the extra features FB messenger has (in-message buttons); then the issues with cleanly displaying on multiple screen sizes; and then you start getting into the fiddly bits like page reloading, form submission failures (say, due to internet disconnect)....
...All of that is done for you. You just need to have the meat of the program (the chat) and you're good to go. Makes a lot of sense, actually.
Think about non-tech-savvy users on low-end devices, Facebook is familiar, and there's no responsiveness or web accessibility issues, it can feel faster because Facebook can optimize what is getting downloaded.
It is scary when you extend this out a few years, FB and Google continue to extend the line of what gets consumed on their platform vs what sends people off to a web page.
Your company's branded app is already dead, soon your company's website will be dead.
Although somewhat it's just the nature of the beast that these things take a little while to percolate into each browser.
I don't know how complete support is for web notifications, but eventually it will be a larger number than Facebook installed base. You can sometimes get some features early in apps, but the web browsers eventually cover everyone.
The last thing I need is more notifications.
I agree the notification requests in browsers are too obtrusive. In an app store they have the property of only asking when you choose to install. On the web there is no install so the request for access is not in response to any action you took, which is annoying.
I think they should make the notification request block the whole app so that sites only put it up when it's the main thing they want to show.
That aside... the point ia for some apps, like messaging, it is necessary.
I am building an app for selling food, people need to know when to start prepping an order. notifications are a must.
I don't know what's the correct balance is but for my own usage I'm ok using emails as a notifications spooler and only use native notifications for some specific usages (mostly chat and email clients). What's sure is that I don't care about notifications from my browser.
Btw I can only say for myself, we all have different way to use our tools. If your clients are happy with your notifications, great. I know I would disable them.