CASE STUDY
Introduction
BEBO, the unemployment chatbot. A chabot is a software application used to conduct an online chat conversation in lieu of direct contact with a live human agent. It’s a user centered chatbot to help people get answers to questions regarding their unemployment situation.
PROBLEM
A key problem is that state unemployment agencies were not prepared to handle such a large number of applicants all needing service at once. A New York Times article found that over 20 million Americans lost their jobs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic this year.
DESK RESEARCH
People shared their experiences with applying unemployment benefits. Story after story revealed people struggling to get through the system. People shared situations such as schools closing and people have to take care of the family members, filing over a month ago and not getting any response or update, people with different work situations. Many people work multiple jobs, in multiple states, in multiple different circumstances.
STATE SELECTION
We had to narrow down the number of states that we could look into. So we mapped out the vulnerability of each state and selected the states that had the highest need. We collected data on 10 variables for every state and created a vulnerability ranking to identify the top 11 states with the highest need. (methohd: 10 variables -> compute z-score -> mean z-score -> vulnerability index)
USER RESEARCH
We started to reach out to people for surveys and interviews. Due to limited time and access to pool of participants we recruited participants for the survey and interviews through personal networks and social media. We submitted an IRB and got it approved prior to conducting the study. I went to Reddit and Facebook becase those were the two platforms that were noted with being the most common social media platforms that people were using.
USER SURVEY RESULTS
Most had a negative or very negative view of the unemployment application system
USER INTERVIEW RESULTS
Most had a negative or very negative view of the unemployment application system
USER PERSONAS
Four personas: Hyeyoung, Ibrahim, Maria, Robin.
SOLUTION
BEBO is unique in that she is a conversational AI chatbot, not just an FAQ. There is no sign up and completely free for users. She is designed to be user friendly and aims to help offload some traffic from constrained state resources.
While Bebo is available to everyone, we targeted the most vulnerable communities that have limited financial, social, and cultural capital. She’s even bilingual.
https://whowteam.github.io/bebo/index.html
