Reese News Lab is an experimental media lab and research project in the UNC School of Media and Journalism.
Over a semester, my 4-student team began with a question and, through an agile design process, created a minimum viable product, business plan, and pitch for an SMS and Facebook Messenger chatbot to service residents of Chatham County, NC in time of rapid rezoning and development.
Inspired by an IDEO article titled Chatbots: Your Ultimate Prototyping Tool, I set up a Google Voice number through which users could text us. We advertised the ‘chatbot’ by placing flyers at community gathering spaces and buying ads on Facebook, and waited for the texts to come in.
It wasn’t scalable, but we learned a great deal from the people who texted us their questions and comments.
This early prototype built a direct line with potential users and allowed us to design a better product.
After these conversations, we asked users to complete a feedback survey sharing their thoughts and habits. Most people were receptive to the survey because we provided value to the user first.
Through market research, user interviews, and multiple rounds of prototyping, we understood the importance of actionable and timely information at a local level and built that into the final product.