Blaze Chatbot

AI Design Challenge

Prompt

Pick a company that offers telephone-based customer support that could benefit from an AI-enabled solution. Study their existing solution and create a proposal to move to an AI-enabled solution that will convince the organization to move forward. 

Research

As a group, we decided to analyze the existing site of the Chicago Park District to identify a few use cases that would be better accomplished by an app than a human conversation.

Research Insights

The current Chicago Park District website has a very complicated information architecture and inaccessible information.

• There are several menus to look through which can make it difficult for users to find information.

• The FAQ page is buried in the footer and very easily missed. This makes it difficult to find important answers to information related to beaches, program registration, permit, etc.

Project Impact

Based on the research insights, we proposed an AI-enabled chatbot for the Chicago Park District that would impact their site in three aspects:

Main Use Cases

As a group, we identified three main use cases that would be better accomplished by a chatbot than a human conversation.

Requests and Questions

Parks often get calls asking questions about topics that can be found on the website that might be more specific to a particular park. 

Examples:

• What time is open swim?

• When is online registration?

• How can I find more information to register for soccer at Portage Park?

• Do you need a membership to use the gym at Chopin Park?

• Do I have to have a reservation to use one of the picnic tables?

Our solution allows users to ask these frequent questions and receive answers more efficiently through Blaze.

Complaints

While complaints are not as frequent, here are some potential complaints that could be addressed with a chatbot.

• Someone was in the space I reserved for a birthday party.

• The changing rooms were not clean.

• The time for senior yoga is too early for me to attend. 

• There aren’t enough events in my park.

Our chatbot can address some common complaints from customers and report them to park supervisors. If the complaint need immediate action, the chatbot can strategically make a call to the park supervisor, so that they can talk to the customer.

Events

Events are an integral part to the Chicago Park District and we want to make sure that users are able to easily find information such as: 

• What events do you have for toddlers?

• How much does the Zoo Lights event at Lincoln Park cost?

• Does the Chicago Park District partner with the Morton Arboretum? 

We would like to further expand this feature to promote certain events that the user might be interested in based on their questions. Blaze allows park patrons to easily find events around the city that fits their criteria.

View High-Fidelity Prototype

Reflection

Improving Blaze

In order to make Blaze more usable and its suggestions more effective, we plan on improving Blaze by allowing it to tag specific words to create a temporary profile for that conversation. Based on previous tagged words, the user will receive event suggestions and related resource information, as well as being able to anticipate the user’s needs. Blaze will also be able to record the frequency of certain questions with readily available responses, as well as tracking important dates and weather reports that may change those responses.

Expanding into Commerce

While the main goal of Blaze is to assist users with their questions and concerns, we would like to eventually expand Blaze’s skills. In future expansions of Blaze, these skills could include access to membership renewals, program recommendations catered to the user’s interest, and merchandising for the CPD and sponsored events. To be able to cater to the user, this would require the ability to store information through a secure account.