Case Study · Mar 2024
Study Companion Chatbot
Adding a personalised in-app chatbot to a 100K+ download EdTech platform, so shy students get instant answers without ever raising a hand.
Overview
EdTech app
on the Play Store
RICE Smart is an EdTech app with over 100,000 downloads and a 4.5-star rating, built around live doubt-clearing sessions. The objective: introduce a personalised chatbot capable of answering any user query related to the courses they’ve purchased, offering a seamless, interactive learning experience alongside the live sessions.
Problem Statement
RICE Smart offers doubt-clearing sessions, yet some users shy away from attending — several are simply too timid to engage in front of the class.
The challenge was to build a chatbot that could understand and respond to a wide range of questions across courses and subjects.
The bot should open the conversation itself by asking what a student was studying, rather than expecting them to know how to phrase a request for help.
Use Cases
After a weekly or monthly exam, students want to know exactly which areas to work on.
Users want to know their position in class to maintain healthy competition, plus performance by individual subject.
Most users are introverted and shy — a chatbot lets them ask any question, anytime.
A user can ask the same question multiple times, though there’s a limited number of questions allowed per month.
One question can have multiple valid answers — e.g. Physics and Chemistry both cover Thermodynamics.
Users want to revisit what they asked earlier instead of retyping it.
Possible Solution
01
An activity section to help users track their performance: attendance for classes attended, exams attempted, a leaderboard to see current class standing, and an exam summary giving a brief subject- and topic-wise report of where to focus next.
02
To increase engagement, a self-quiz feature lets a user create a quiz for themselves with AI — just add the subject, topic name and number of questions. The quiz is generated instantly and can be shared with friends, turning revision into something social.
Possible Solution
If a user asks a question they’ve asked before, they’re redirected straight to the earlier chat instead of getting a fresh answer.
The user is asked to specify the course and subject before the bot works on a solution.
A log and history of past questions is maintained, so a user can come back and check earlier answers anytime.
User Flow
RiceBot asks which course, then which subject, before the student writes anything.
A question asked before goes straight to the earlier chat; every answer is kept in a searchable log.
Create a quiz from a subject, topic and number of questions; AI generates it instantly and it can be shared with friends.
Design Screens
Pick a step to see its screen.
RICE Smart
Turning a live, sometimes intimidating doubt-clearing session into an always-available conversation — so getting unstuck never depends on being brave enough to raise a hand.