Remember the last time you were sick? So sick in fact you had to get off the hamster wheel of your busy life and slow way down. As you made the umpteenth trip to the bathroom or blew your nose until it was raw, all you wished was that someone would baby you like grandma used to do. Even Nana’s soothing voice comforted you. If you weren’t so sick, you could have thought clearly and remembered what granny used to do in times like these. Your abuela either walked into the kitchen or bathroom to prepare a home remedy or get inexpensive over-the-counter treatment. Dadi knew best. Now, you no longer need to suffer alone. With Global Grandmother Cures, you can get the advice from an Asian, Black, and/or Hispanic grandmother.
That opening pitch/introduction started the presentation, on which I’d collaborated with three other students from my evening Data science class. I’d originally had a different idea for the Chatbot project when I thought I’d have to do the whole thing by myself. Fortunately, I only had to do one-fourth. I stayed my comfort zone.
As a matter of fact, we all landed in the roles where we were best suited. The only guy in the group was also the person who had the most coding experience. Naturally, we rallied around him to present the code and tinker with the given Chatbot code to personalize it with the persona of someone’s grandmother.
If we’d had more time, we could have researched and written more home remedies data. During our first meeting, I shared my mother’s most popular home remedy for warding off a cold: crushed raw garlic in a spoon, followed by a shot of juice. Another person stated that sleeping with sliced raw onions in the bottom of a sock was her family’s home remedy for colds.
Another stated that her family just rubbed Vick’s all over their body. At that point, we all screamed that our families also used Vick’s Vapor rub. That was a unifying moment since the four of us represented Asian, Black and Hispanic cultures.
Another project member worked on the visualization. She designed emojis with different skin tones and gray hair to represent the grandmother personas.
Finally, the last project member handled the business monetization. In our rehearsal, I told her that we couldn’t use such words as “diagnosis,” “treatment,” nor “cure.” Plus, we couldn’t mention specific diseases. The safe words were “helps,” “alleviates,” “soothes,” as well as general symptoms such as “head cold,” “stomachache.”
Yet, her idea was solid, given the fact that the US is a developed country without universal healthcare; so one hospital stay due to an accident or major medical condition could realistically bankrupt someone. Even a doctor’s visit may be out of one’s budget, yet relief may be found in a grocery aisle–along with rest and drinking plenty of water.
Our Chatbot would help alleviating the minor symptoms with the caveat if symptoms persist or constitute an emergency, then someone should either call 911 or otherwise see a doctor.
If I had the opportunity to develop this project, I’d make more of a deep-dive effort to research home remedies from different cultures, starting with a collage of names for “grandmother,” written in the language/alphabet from their culture of origin.