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This is our cute BoAtiE with an 'A' and a 'E'.

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BoAtiE is a friendly and innocently sarcastic robot. He takes inspiration from the 2008 movie WALL-E.

BoAtiE helps you with your queries regarding Adobe After Effects. He also,

Guides user through basic introductions.

Gives user options on what they want to learn.

Relays information to users.

Optimizes best possible information according to user's needs.

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BoAtiE was created to help new users understand After Effects better. Our fellow students inspired us with his creation.

As students of Digital Media, we often come across several assignments that requires us to have knowledge on Adobe After Effects. Since a lot of us do not have creative backgrounds, we created BoAtiE to guide our friends in need.

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BoAtiE targets these audiences,

Design students

Beginners on After Effects

Motion graphic designers

People wanting information

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After Effects is a complex application and the most difficult of the Creative Cloud tools to learn from (American Graphics Institute, 2024). While other Adobe software like Photoshop and Illustrator are easier to learn once comfortable with the interface, After Effects requires a bit more knowledge on animation and motion graphics principle to get familiar with. The application has a steep learning curve that inexperienced users may find overwhelming, even after they feel comfortable navigating the interface (American Graphics Institute, 2024).

BoAtiE acknowledges this difficulty and is eager to make the learning process easier for new pupils and even experts. He tries to,

Address surficial queries about After Effects,

Quench in-depth and up to date queries,

Answer basic and repetitive FAQs,

Provide solution to After Effects' problems.

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BoAtiE took an avatar after being animated on Adobe After Effects, but we could not export it to use on Voiceflow. We tried different render options; however, with limited resources it resulted in failure as we were not able to render BoAtiE in GIF format.

Solution: We took help from Google and YouTube to tackle this problem. We installed Adobe Media Encoder which had an inbuilt feature of exporting video in GIF format.

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One big challenge was making sure BoAtiE talked and listened in a friendly way. He had to analyze the input and respond in a correct way. We had to make sure what the next appropriate response would be. Getting BoAtiE to be friendly but not too sarcastic was also a challenge.

Solution: We got together in Miro to draw a flow chart of dialogues and proper responses. We played with Voiceflow's settings until BoAtiE sounded right, like a cool friend. We have used some cool tips to make sure BoAtiE responses are helpful and interesting.

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Another challenge was getting BoAtiE to work seamlessly with After Effects. When asked a question, he should answer within the boundary and should be able to answer any questions related to Adobe After Effects.

Solution: We researched several different knowledge sources and Adobe After Effects guidelines for BoAtiE to go through before answering. For questions that were out of the syllabus, he would pull out and answer using AI.

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As we were building and simultaneously testing out chatbot, we ran out of tokens. A free version of Voice only allows a small number of tokens, and we completely ran out of it. We could not evaluate our chatbot anymore.

Solution: We asked our professor for help like any other student. We then created a new account for Voiceflow and started anew with prior data and information.

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Creating BoAtiE, the chatbot for After Effects, was like developing a friendly robotic companion. We researched various technologies to help our chatbot understand and speak with people in a natural way. Here is what we used.

Miro

Miro, formerly known as RealtimeBoard, is a digital collaboration platform (Wikipedia, 2024). Our chatbot flowchart was designed using Miro to sketch every team member’s thought and imagination on a board.

Adobe After Effects

BoAtiE was until now a concept with no face or body in need of a mascot identity to look presentable. With the help of a rough sketch, BoAtiE was crafted in Adobe After Effects itself and was rigged to wave gestures towards its users.

Adobe Media Encoder

With a moving body and smiley face, BoAtiE was now eager to be at service. Adobe Media Encoder, an encoding engine for Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition, and Adobe Character Animator (Adobe, 2023), was used to export the animation created in After Effects into a GIF.

Voiceflow

Voiceflow; a collaborative AI Agent building platform for teams to design, develop, and launch assistants (Voiceflow, 2019), was used to make BoAtiE a reality. Voiceflow enabled BoAtiE to communicate naturally, answering user queries about After Effects. We also added a touch of humor and friendliness to BoAtiE’s responses so that chatting with it feels like talking to a buddy who knows a lot about After Effects. Its responses were also customized using Voiceflow's inbuilt tools.

WhatsApp

As a group of 4, we needed to be on the same page and communicate well with each other. We used WhatsApp to divide our workload, share our thoughts and ideas, test our chatbot, ask for suggestions and feedback, and to do all the group discussions.

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Several chatbots were researched to get a basic understanding of what big names were doing uniquely on their virtual assistant. The following two were the shortlisted chatbots that we researched thoroughly.

Oracle chatbot

Oracle is a U.S.-based information technology company that offers a wide range of business-oriented products and services that include Oracle Database, a relational database management system (RDBMS) (Oracle, 2024).

Oracle’s virtual assistant only allowed user to choose between two options from the beginning. It either lets the user chat with a sales expert or get technical support.

Adobe Virtual Assistant

Since we were making a chatbot related to Adobe software, we also searched for their personalized chatbot. Once signed in onto Adobe’s website, it allowed user to have a conversation with the chatbot. The virtual assistant would take information from the user and confirm the question. It would then advise the user to have a direct conversation with an agent.

We also explored a different chatbot developing platform to investigate more. We got into Landbot for this.

Landbot

Landbot.io is a no-code chatbot platform that empowers businesses to build frictionless conversational experiences from end-to-end (GetApp, 2024). Its work interface and building process is just like Voiceflow. The building blocks are better articulated, and the options are more too. The interface to easy to understand overall.

However, we decided to stick with Voiceflow to build our virtual assistant. This project taught us making a chatbot is not just about technical aspects, it is about creating it easy and fun for people to use. It is like combining tech skills with a bit of creativity to develop a robot friend everyone wants to chat with.

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We have also made BoAtiE 2.0 which is a chatbot that uses audio stimulation to function. It take user queries in the form of audio, analyses it, turns it into text and give answers in the form of a narrative message. BoAtiE 2.0 is a bit in prototype phase and needs a little more love and support but we have given it a shot.

Now all we need to do is get ready for testing BoAtiE.

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Here is a proper documentation of our project.

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Adobe, 2023. Adobe. [Online]
Available at: https://helpx.adobe.com/au/media-encoder/using/overview-media-encoder-user-interface.html
[Accessed 10 March 2024].

American Graphics Institute, 2024. AGI. [Online]
Available at: https://www.agitraining.com/adobe/after-effects/classes/how-difficult-to-learn-after-effects
[Accessed 07 March 2024].

GetApp, 2024. GetApp. [Online]
Available at: https://www.getapp.com/customer-service-support-software/a/landbot-io/
[Accessed 07 March 2024].

Oracle, 2024. OCI. [Online]
Available at: https://www.oracle.com/au/chatbots/what-is-a-chatbot/
[Accessed 07 March 2024].

Voiceflow, 2019. LinkedIn. [Online]
Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/voiceflowhq/about/
[Accessed 10 March 2024].

Wikipedia, 2024. Wikipedia. [Online]
Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miro_(collaboration_platform)
[Accessed 10 March 2024].

www.voiceflow.com. (n.d.). Voiceflow Documentation. [online] Available at: https://www.voiceflow.com/docs

Patel, M. (2023). How to make chatbots using Voiceflow? [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@manthan2024/how-to-make-chatbots-using-voiceflow-b61b1c65e2ad