So, at Fruit Tree Labs we know a thing or two about dialogue-driven interaction... but who might benefit from this? In this second blog post we explore who would be the main possible beneficiaries of our dialogue platform and expertise...
The Research & Development Community
Innovators that want to push the boundaries of technology, and bring positive societal change through new technologies often use collaborative, public-funded R&D projects as a starting point. In these projects, one needs to build strong consortia, with diverse knowledge and background to tackle the innovation challenges. Fruit Tree Labs is the perfect partner in any consortium that aims to build innovations that could benefit from dialogue-driven interaction.
Why are we a good partner? For one, we are hyper-focused on dialogue-driven interaction, while being domain-agnostic. Whoever your intended target users are, our dialogue platform could be a technology-fit. Second, we have over 15 years of experience in participating in highly innovative R&D consortia — we can participate, coordinate and help shape competitive proposals. And finally, our dialogue platform is completely free and open-source, covered by an MIT License — this means that there is zero barrier to further exploitation beyond the life of the project. From our side, there will be no tedious IP- and exploitation agreement discussions. Ever.
The list of European research projects that have used the dialogue platform to power a dialogue-driven interaction component includes: SmartWork, LEAVES, iHelp, RE-SAMPLE, and of course the project that started it all: Council of Coaches.
Image: European research projects that have used our dialogue platform to Power their dialogue-driven interaction component.
Commercial Apps in Behaviour Change and Related Domains
There is still a large (and growing!) wish-list of features for our dialogue platform — the work is far from done. However, the foundation is solid, and our platform is being used in commercial applications even today.
Fruit Tree Labs can assist commercial applications that want to integrate dialogue-driven interaction into their products today, using our own dialogue platform: DialogueBranch. From our point of view, the type of applications that would benefit most from DialogueBranch are those that require in-depth interaction with their users, such as eLearning, interactive guides, and "behaviour change" applications. Especially in contexts where the correctness of the information provided is of paramount importance.
Designing an effective behaviour change application is extremely challenging. This has been our bread-and-butter for the past decade. See for example our work on tailoring physical activity coaching systems (op den Akker et al., 2014), or our framework for generating motivational message (op den Akker et al., 2015). Needless to say, we have experienced the challenges of behaviour change first-hand. Ultimately, an effective behaviour change application builds up a relationship with the user, is able to educate, convince, motivate, and nudge users towards good behaviour. Dialogue-driven interaction through an (embodied) virtual agent is an ideal way of tackling all of this, because it allows for very personalized and in-depth coaching.
Read more about our dialogue platform at www.dialoguebranch.com to see if it is the right fit for your application — or contact us to see how we can help, advise or integrate into your platform.
(Computer) Role Playing Games
And finally... video games! DialogueBranch and the way we design dialogue-driven interaction is extremely inspired by the classic CRPGs of old: Planescape Torment, the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, as well as the games that sparked the CRPG revival like Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin and the Pathfinder CRPGs. We love video games, and we would love to make our contribution to the field.
Even though we are not making video games ourselves, and we're not part of "the gaming industry", we are very open for collaborations in this domain. So if you are making games — and if you're looking for a partner, we would love to get in touch.
Well that was it for this week's blog post. Next time we will dive into the details of our dialogue platform. Follow us on Twitter @FruitTreeLabs, or connect to our LinkedIn Page to stay up to date. Cheers!