Cognitive Computing: Megatrend’s ‘Frida’ Selected in IBM’s Watson Build Challenge

Megatrend business solutions have been selected in the second phase of the Watson Build challenge to continue developing their cognitive business plan, Frida – Free Time Assistant into a working prototype using IBM Watson APIs on IBM Cloud. IBM will provide Megatrend business solutions access to IBM’s development tools and collaboration with IBM’s cognitive computing experts and business consulting mentors to bring the Frida – Free Time Assistant concept to life as soon as possible.

The Watson Build challenge is IBM’s first cognitive challenge designed exclusively for IBM’s business partners. In the first phase, IBM received over a hundred business plan submissions from business partners around the world. In the second phase, selected Watson-based solutions advanced to the next stage where partners will build prototypes to demonstrate their cognitive products and services.

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“The response to our first Watson Build challenge for business partners was truly excellent,” said John Teltsch, General Manager, IBM Global Business Partners. “We congratulate Megatrend business solutions on presenting a quality business plan based on IBM Cloud and Watson and on advancing to the next round of the challenge. We look forward to supporting Megatrend business solutions in developing the Frida – Free Time Assistant prototype with the aim of presenting it to our mutual customers.”

Today, technology drives tourism – from websites that help travelers book their trips to apps that provide them with various reviews and local recommendations about places they will visit. Such websites and digital applications often use questionnaires, filtering, and sorting, resulting in a loss of time that could be spent enjoying city attractions.

Free Time Assistant

Frida – Free Time Assistant is a mobile application for travelers that uses Watson APIs on IBM Cloud to provide travelers with concrete information about attractions in their immediate vicinity, including personalized suggestions. Frida will leverage Watson’s cognitive capabilities to deliver specific information and user-tailored recommendations in real-time, helping travelers quickly navigate through digital “noise” and find relevant events and activities.

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The solution will help travelers enhance their travel experience and will promote restaurants, museums, shops, sports events, historical sites, and cultural activities of a given country. The application will be useful for tourists as well as local employees in the tourism industry.

The application uses Watson’s Tone Analyzer when suggesting suitable events, Personality Insights when making travel recommendations, tourist or cultural attractions, and Natural Language Recognition during conversations about local attractions. Frida communicates and provides information based on the traveler’s previous choices, as well as the choices of people with similar interests. The application continuously learns from user inputs to deliver even better recommendations. By learning from Watson, Frida will be able to predict the user’s desired activities and provide suggestions based on previous selections, interests, and even the user’s current emotional state.

“Travelers today can use countless websites and applications offered by numerous companies around the world to enhance their user experience. However, such websites and applications are not connected in a way that suits the user,” said Mario Jurić, Manager of the Business Solutions Department at Megatrend Business Solutions. “The application we proposed, Frida, will use publicly available data and provide a unique interface for users, so travelers will no longer have to search through numerous sites and applications to find relevant suggestions.”

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Megatrend Business Solutions joined the Watson Build challenge for IBM’s business partners to help develop a new type of business – one that develops and offers cloud applications using the best global infrastructure. The company started the project with a Design Thinking workshop led by Milivoj Obradović, Megatrend’s Design Thinking consultant, which resulted in the idea of developing Frida – an application for people who want to travel and receive recommendations about the countries they are in. Megatrend’s developers are currently working on developing the prototype, using some of the 160+ IBM microservices available on IBM Cloud.

Megatrend Business Solutions is a Platinum IBM business partner in IBM PartnerWorld, a program that provides partners with the resources and tools needed to succeed in the cognitive era. For more information about Watson Build, click here.