Demo day was an amazing opportunity to run a user test on my prototype to discuss people's general reaction and generate some new ideas to ponder as I continue to build and iterate. The guest critics were super insightful, and their ideas brought clarity to the direction of Winspire.

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There were two takes I hadn't considered previously with respect to our relationship with procrastination. The simplest terms I could come up with for them are 'productive procrastination' and 'procrastinating productivity.'

 

In the former, users might actually be fueling their brain during their resting period with topics relevant to their work. I was specifically told this phrase: "being bored is one of the greatest sources of inspiration." The suggestion was that in the same way that people need rest and recovery, a 'better night's sleep' equivalent in the context of a chatbot would be to "procrastinate smarter."

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In the latter, a person who doesn't necessarily have a direct procrastination habit simply fails to prioritize work of greater importance, and is stuck 'hamsterwheeling' because they've been putting in all this effort without actually getting anywhere.

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To make Winspire a more actionable tool than where it stands right now (which is just a layout of ways to interact with the bot), I would have to consider these two idioms. While they seemingly contradict at a glance, they're not mutually exclusive, and I believe that at times most of us wrestle with and perhaps even phase between the two. Accounting for both in designing the chatbot should better it overall, helping to articulate the following considerations:

 

a) what sort of content or dialogue I provide. 

b) when I provide it.

c) how to help in time blocking.

d) how to help in task prioritization.

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One idea was to integrate a timer (perhaps initially set to 25 minutes as per the pomodoro technique), as well as calendar integration and interactions at the start of the day that help you identify your most important tasks and guide you towards their completion through push notifications.  

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From a conversational standpoint, I was advised to play with irony as a means of channeling a positive feedback mechanism. Something like my original idea in which if the user has been procrastinating on Facebook, it'll send a message saying "check out the most incredible masterpiece, guaranteed" with a link back to their work document. This might further imply, according to the critic, that I can work on developing a style guide to format the chatbot's tone & diction.

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I was also advised to keep discussions with the chatbot interactive rather than responsive. The critic said that I want to automate as much of the dialogue as possible, which implies I'll need to create more interactions around keywords and phrases.

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In terms of gathering data, I've been advised to consider the implications on security in light of recent events (Facebook Cambridge Analytica), and how I deal with issues of transparency and data usage. Either way, I've been struggling with figuring out how to pull certain information via chatfuel, so I might consider alternative ways of going about getting information. 

 

In contrast, this was a website that was suggested to do the opposite, and pull data from just about everywhere: https://ifttt.com/

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Still, I want to be ethical of course, so I'll proceed accordingly.

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