Right-Sizing Project Management: A Practical Framework for Small Agencies
How do you know how much process and documentation are enough to keep a project on track (without burying your team and clients in overhead)? This is, genuinely, one of the harder problems in project management for small agencies. It took me years to get it roughly right, and I’m still calibrating. I’ve been managing […]
Top 5 Elements for a Successful Chatbot
Most chatbot failures aren’t caused by bad AI. They’re caused by missing governance. These five elements show up in every serious post-mortem. Clear scope, authority, and refusal rules Knowledge provenance and source control Failure handling and escalation paths Observability, logging, and auditability Tone, accessibility, and institutional credibility 1. Clear Scope, Authority, and Refusal Rules If […]
A Client Guide to Testing Your Chatbot Before it Goes Live
This isn’t a developer’s guide. It’s a practical checklist for teams commissioning or launching a chatbot. We encourage our clients to test their chatbot properly throughout the development process. The gap between “it works” and “it works well for our customers” is where chatbot projects either succeed or become expensive mistakes. We’ve tested that the […]
Charity Chatbots Under the Microscope: Evaluating Reasoning, Tone, Structure, and Safety
When we tested six charity chatbots across nine technical capability categories, we weren’t just measuring impressive features. We were asking a crucial question: How sophisticated does your chatbot need to be, to resolve your user’ problems. The answer depends entirely on context. A simple scripted chatbot might be perfect for a museum’s opening hours. That […]
Chatbots in industry: From fraud prevention to legal support and charity triage
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept reserved for sci-fi enthusiasts or tech labs. It is embedded in our daily lives. Among the most visible manifestations of AI are chatbots and other AI-driven tools, which have found their way into banking, legal services, healthcare, and beyond. Yet, despite their widespread adoption, the way […]
AI autonomy guided by safe innovation
AI autonomy, safety, and the responsibility of serving users who need it most When building AI systems for vulnerable populations, every design decision carries weight. Too much control and you lose the naturalness that makes conversations helpful. Too little and you risk responses that could genuinely harm. We’ve spent years building conversational systems for charities […]
Evaluating Chatbots: Technical Rigour and Human Experience
Chatbots are everywhere now. They answer customer questions, help you book tickets, and even act like digital assistants. They’re powered by large language models, which is just a fancy way of saying computers trained on lots of text so they can “talk” like us. Making a chatbot is not the hard part anymore. Despite their […]
RAG as Your Anchor: Grounding Chatbots in Trusted Data
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) combines information retrieval with generative AI, allowing systems to provide more accurate, up-to-date responses. This approach is especially valuable as large language models (LLMs) are limited by the static data they were trained on. This is where RAG steps in. By pulling updated, trusted data from your organisations knowledge bases. RAG […]
How AI Features Are Changing the Game for UI/UX AI Design
AI is everywhere, and design is no exception. From speeding up workflows to generating content, artificial intelligence is changing the design process. For those working in UI/UX AI design, it brings a mix of opportunities and challenges. But despite the rapid growth, AI isn’t replacing designers anytime soon. Instead, it’s becoming a powerful assistant—one that […]
What is a Custom API and Why Does Your Business Need One?
In today’s digital landscape, businesses world wide use an average of 112 different SaaS applications. So ensuring these systems communicate seamlessly is crucial—and that’s where APIs come into play. Your mobile app pulling real-time data from your CRM, or your web platform effortlessly syncing with your cloud database—no manual downloads, no clunky spreadsheets. In this […]