So, if you read Part 1, you’re all up to speed. If not, no worries. You might be a bit lost, but if you care, you can bounce over and come back for the thrilling conclusion.
I first showed the Taleo Interview Evaluation Glass app and Android app at a Taleo and HCM Cloud customer expo in late April, and as I showed it, my story evolved.
Demos are living organisms; the more you show them, the more you morph the story to fit the reactions you get. As I showed the Taleo Glass app, the demo became more about Glass and less about the story I was hoping to tell, which was about completing the interview evaluation more quickly to move along the hiring process.
So, I began telling that story in context of allowing any user, with any device, to complete these evaluations quickly, from the heads-up hotness of Google Glass, all the way down the technology coolness scale to a boring old dumbphone with just voice and text capabilities.
I used the latter example for two reasons. First, the juxtaposition of Google Glass and a dumbphone sending texts got a positive reaction and focused the demo around how we solved the problem vs. “is that Google Glass?”
And second, I was already designing an app to allow a user with a dumbphone to complete an interview evaluation.
Noel (@noelportugal) introduced me to Twilio (@twilio) years ago when he built the epic WebCenter Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots. Those robots punched based on text and voice input collected by Twilio.
Side note, Noel has long been a fan of Twilio’s, and happily, they are an Oracle Partner. Ultan (@ultan) is hard at work dreaming up cool stuff we can do with Twilio, so stay tuned.
Anyway, Twilio is the perfect service to power the app I had in mind. Shortly after the customer expo ended, I asked Raymond to build out this new piece, so I could have a full complement of demos to show that fit the full story.
In about a week, Raymond was done, and we now have a holistic story to tell.
The interface is dead simple. The user simply sends text messages to a specific number, using a small set of commands. First, sending “Taleo help” returns a list of the commands. Next, the user sends “Taleo eval requests” to retrieve a list of open interview evaluations.
The user then sends a command to start one of the numbered evaluations, e.g. “Start eval 4” and each question is sent as a separate message.
When the final question has been answered, a summary of the user’s answered is sent, and the user can submit the evaluation by sending “Confirm submit.”
And that’s it. Elegant and simple and accessible to any manager, e.g. field managers who spend their days traveling between job sites. Coupled with the Glass app and the Android app, we’ve covered all the bases not already covered by Taleo’s web app and mobile apps.
As always, the disclaimer applies. This is not product. It’s simply a concept demo, built to show people the type of R&D we, Oracle Applications User Experience and this team, do. Not product, only research.
Find the comments.
I was worried that this blog would bring me under the fire of internet trolls, but instead I am the troll. I feel like this post would be so much easier for me to understand if you had a user story for it. I understand technically what the app does, but I think I need to read through it again to translate that into what a real person would be doing with it in their cubicle, office, home office, on the go, etc.
Ha, my fault for not reading the instructions in paragraph 1 carefully enough. I went back and read Part 1 and I get it now, even without the user story.
I’m glad you wrote this followup. After reading the part 1, the question it left me with was “what purpose is Glass serving here?” other than being cool and demo-able. But after part 2, I feel like the texting interface is more 1) familiar to what users already do and 2) more practical (doesn’t require equipment costing well over $1k).
Now on to read about Twilio. Too much learning for a weekend!
P.S. Final question. What time zone is your blog in? It’s giving my comments time stamps 1 hour in the past.
@Joyce: You’re having an interesting morning 🙂 The time zone thing is set on the server. I’ve noticed it before, but never really invested any time to change it, lazy, busy, whichever you prefer.
It’s either makes one look like he/she has started work earlier than normal, or hide the fact that one works as late as one does. win/win?
@Joyce: Blog commenting is work? I guess for the spammers it is.
No, it’s “social media management”. Totally counts as work for someone in emerging whatevers.