Civichat
Civichat is a service that allows users to find subsidies and grants that are suitable for them. Currently, we are in the process of creating a website for this service. We also plan to provide it as an official account on LINE. Through this account, users will be able to apply for subsidies and grants that they have found, with the option of having us handle the application process on their behalf.
With the support of the Entrepreneurship Department at N High, Civichat, Inc. has been established as a company. The establishment procedures are currently underway (as of 2020/08/22). We are proud to announce that Civichat has been selected as one of the third term members of the N High Entrepreneurship Department. In autumn, there will be a special screening meeting, which will include an interim business presentation.
At the NED, an event organized by N High, Civichat's representative, tkgshn, gave a presentation and had a brief conversation with Yuji Maeda from SHOWROOM. The presentation materials can be found here(https://speakerdeck.com/tkgshn/civichat-1ren-hitorinizui-shi-naxing-zheng-falseintahuesuwojie-keru). Unfortunately, the video archive of the event has not been made public yet (as of 2020/08/22). However, we have received positive feedback about the presentation.
In terms of the service concept, our goal is to allow users to easily find subsidies and grants that are suitable for them and apply for them through LINE. We believe that using a Chat UI with a search function, rather than a traditional keyword search UI, is more effective. This is because users may not be aware of the keywords they need to search for. We see Civichat as an exploration-based Chat UI that addresses the proposition of "recognizing what is not recognized". We hypothesize that this approach, which combines recognition, exploration, and recommendation, can help reduce the selection gap.
To achieve this, we need to consider how to make the meaning clear and trace back to the same source through the flow of context. We believe that a Chat UI is a suitable interface for searching concepts and contexts. Of course, optimization using AI and big data will be necessary, but we understand that these technical aspects are not important to the users.