Mila
Mila was a conversational bot experiment running on Facebook Messenger, designed as part of the AJ+ election night 2016 coverage.
Concept
For election night, AJ+ coverage was a high production digital live stream similar to network TV coverage. Rather than use broadcast data and graphics, we used digital tools built in Javascript, allowing us to experiment for uses with data visualization of results.
Mila was a simple bot built to allow deeper interaction with the election coverage.
My Role
Design Manager
The Conversational Bot
The bot was designed and tested over the course of a couple of weeks, and while limited, had the capacity to respond to natural language queries.
Users could ask about specific candidates or races, and receive current results. Additionally, it pushed out the videos produced by AJ+ throughout election day.
Election Day
Product Manager Tawanda Kanhema explains Mila during the livestream
Live Election Data
Users could query about information on candidates in major races, ballot measures, and for live updates on election results.
User-Generated Content
Users submitted photos of themselves voting, and their thoughts about the election. These were shared as updates.
Reach
Mila interacted with 5,000 users in over 420 locations over three days. The largest reach outside the US was England, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Qatar.
