No Tech Support

[AidanCodes]

Project Abstract

This cross-platform application is intended to avoid calls and long waits for technical support by assisting the user in searching for their problem in a way that a more tech-savvy individual would. The idea for this application revolves around prompting a user for more details about their problem and formulating a search query for them. Autocomplete or search-suggestions are presented to the user at each prompt. After searching and sorting through results, the user is presented with the most helpful forum posts and articles that can be found on the internet. If all else fails, the user is directed to an appropriate tech-support page.

High Level Requirement

The user is presented with an incomplete sentence in a "Mad Libs" style. After each completed prompt, a new relevant prompt will appear where they can provide more detail about their situation. After completing a number of prompts, the user will be given the option to search or continue adding information. When they search, they are provided with a link to the problem device's support page as well as multiple forum posts (from sites like Stack Overflow or Tom's Hardware) from others who have had similar problems. Now that the root of the problem is more obvious (from the provided search query), the user should be able to solve simple technology problems on their own.

Conceptual Design

This app should be available on Android, iOS, and on the web. A comprehensive back-end and API will need to be created to achieve the full functionality of the app on any platform. Either the backend or the app will need to communicate with a web-search API (Bing API is available) to perform search results. PHP and MySQL would be good options for this portion of the application. The web front-end will need to query the backend API often and append content with JavaScript.

Background

The app is analogous to the troubleshooting questions that a tech-support staff member might ask over the phone or an automated assistant might ask in an online chat. The game of 20 Questions is another similar concept. However, neither of these directly employ a search API to find results from other people with similar issues. Prompts will start out broad and get more specific as the problem is narrowed down. Other apps that assist users in troubleshooting exist, but are limited to certain products or brands. For example, enterprise-level companies such as utilize similar ideas, but limit them to results from their own site. See Verizon's Device Troubleshooting Assistant Others are available on the app store such as Computer Troubleshooting by JoeCool Apps, which are both specific and offline. As of the time of this proposal, no universal troubleshooting application seems to exist.

Required Resources

Hardware:

• Computer (Mac if developing for iOS with native tools)
• Android Phone (optional)
• iPhone (optional)
• Server (online access or otherwise)

Software (alternatives welcome!):

• MySQL
• PHP
• JS
• Nginx
• Cross-platform or specific Android and iOS IDEs
• SSH/SFTP client

APIs

• Bing (or other web-search/SERP API)
• Search suggestions (custom or other)

Team Members

Overall, this project would benefit from people who like to overcome obstacles, adapt quickly, and want to make something that might help people avoid a lengthy tech-support call. I personally would appreciate working with people who gas experience with creating cross-platform mobile apps. Students who can boast a positive experience with a cross-platform IDE would be a very helpful (especially if they are good with UI design!). Web-dev, scraping, and SEO knowledge would all be a plus as well.

[darren-wei-chen]

This is such a unique and fun way of having an accessible "tech support" app for those of us who are less tech-savvy and don't have the know-how or time to spend searching through tech forums, support pages, and FAQs to find the answers to my problems. As someone who is used to being tech support for my family and friends, this would be much more helpful to have and suggest to them!

I love the "Mad Libs" idea that you propose. I have very limited experience with app development, so I think this would be an interesting project to work on that is somewhat outside of my comfort zone. I did work on UI design at my internship over the summer, so I could definitely help with that, and in terms of improvements I would love to help design ways the "Mab Libs" format helps narrow down search results, such as filtering by product/manufacturer name, and maybe helpful tips for users to avoid issues in the first place (preventing errors is the best way of solving them, after all!).

[HenryKay1]

Hey, I ranked this proposal at the top of my personal list, because it addresses a problem I've faced for a while now. My parents and some uncles, and aunties, know how to do a google search but filtering the results to what they actually want is a problem, so when I'm around they always have me help them with that. I think this application could be of great help to them because not only does it making their search more specific, but it makes sure the get the most they could get form a search regarding their issue before contacting tech support

I have some experience coming up with test cases for a web application, which I feel could be of help because this application requires a critical step by step analysis for a users path. I also have experience making a web application work with a database so I could provide information to ensure our application is built under the right technical conditions and with the appropriate technology. Moreover, I currently work remotely as an intern for this company, where we work on a huge web application; fixing bugs, beatifying the user interface and organizing data structures. So I think the skills I picked up could be of some help.

[KarlSchaller]

I think this is one of the best proposals because it is an idea that seems so effective and intuitive that I'm surprised it doesn't already exist. This could be really useful for helping your average person who isn't an expert at searching through Google for the exact specific solution that they need. It would also probably still be useful even for people who are experts at that!

I have a good amount of experience with web development, mobile development, and working with various APIs, so I think I could contribute to the core of this project in multiple ways. I don't really have experience with making cross-platform apps, so I'm not completed sure what is this best way to do this, but we could probably accomplish this with React Native, or maybe for this project with a pretty simplistic UI, we could even just use WebViews.

[Marcus-Anestad]

I think that this is a really interesting project proposal. I know that a lot of people have difficulty even understanding what their tech issue is, let alone trying to fix it. I feel as though this project could really help people who need it. As someone who has worked in tech support, I would be able to bring that experience to this project. Additionally, I have some experience developing android applications.

[daviddcho]

Hey this sounds like a fun and interesting project. One of the things I realized when helping people that aren't too good with computers is that they don't know how to use the internet and google stuff. Or they just can't be bothered to parse through a bunch of information to find the solution. I think this app could help people with that.

I'm wondering how we would find the websites with the solutions or just informative towards the solution. I would be interested in looking into the different search engine techniques that might help. Will something like PageRank help? I don't have too much experience with web development but I would be happy to learn to help with this project.