Online advice assistant

Contact: David Hardcastle Amazon <dhardcas@amazon.co.uk>

The Citizens Advice Bureau is an organisation that helps people find information relevant to problems in their lives. A major area of activity is telephone advice consultations, at the end of which the caller might be directed to a website with information leading to assistance - for example, a family law practice or a social welfare agency. Your goal is to create a service that might be more comfortable for younger people, based on anonymous online chat rather than phone lines. The goal isn't to make an intelligent chatbot, because human contact is important to people with problems, but you could help make the process more efficient, for example by directing either callers or advisers to suitable parts of earlier conversations that seem relevant. Remember that a simple Google search won't work here. People describe their problems, not the answer they are looking for, and there are many commercial websites that aim to exploit people with problems rather than offer them neutral advice.