| Great point about two-way vs one-way. We find that it's still valuable for one-way communication because our main goal is to make finances relatable and easy to understand, and a chat interface literally forces us to be simple and clear in how we explain. Certain concepts might be easy to name but hard to explain (APR, rolling average, prorated spending), and a chat interface allows us to teach those concepts in great detail. For example, here's a excerpt from explaining how credit card interest works: Penny: Chase charges you interest based on your <em>APR</em> (annual percentage rate). Penny: You probably saw this number when you signed up for your credit card :credit_card: Penny: APRs are usually about 12-24%. Penny: As far as I can tell, your Chase Freedom's APR is about <em>{{ numeral(0.15).format('0%') }}</em>, which is about normal. You: OK Penny: To compute how much interest you get charged every day, divide your APR by the number of days in a year, like this: <rest of conversation> We also do a fair amount of two-way communication when we're understanding a user's circumstances. When Penny coaches people about investing, we try to understand the user's financial situation based on how much risk they're willing to take, how much they have that's investable, their horizon for returns, etc, all of which fits pretty naturally into a chat interface. |