Humphrey the Water Thrifty Camel – AI Voice Kiosk Experience for Cedar Park

Client Background

The City of Cedar Park launched the Water Thrifty initiative to help residents adopt sustainable water practices, reduce waste, and stay informed about watering schedules and drought-stage changes. Their outreach needed a friendly, engaging presence that appealed to families, children, and adults alike. The city sought an interactive, personality-driven way to teach water conservation at festivals, public events, and community gatherings.

Humphrey the Water Thrifty Camel was created as a cheerful, approachable mascot capable of delivering accurate conservation tips while keeping interactions fun, memorable, and accessible to all ages.

Project Goals

1. Create a Distinct Conservation Mascot:
   Develop a warm, humorous, and educational character able to engage visitors at outdoor events and foster positive conservation habits.
2. Deliver Accurate, Trusted Water Guidance:
   Train the character on Cedar Park’s watering schedules, drought stages, indoor/outdoor conservation tips, and city resources.
3. Develop a Safe, Age-Appropriate AI Persona:
   Ensure conversations stay family-friendly, non-political, and on-topic, with strong redirect logic for inappropriate queries.
4. Provide an Accessible Public Experience:
   Build behavior patterns for short sentences, supportive language, visual transcript options, and sensory-friendly responses.
5. Support City Staff and Public Outreach:
   Enable the mascot to guide residents to city programs, digital portals, rebates, reporting tools, and conservation resources.

Challenges and Solutions

• Establishing the Mascot’s Personality and Voice

Challenge:
The character needed to be memorable, delightfully playful, but also authoritative enough to convey conservation guidelines effectively.

Solution:
Developed a detailed narrative, tone guide, language rules, signature phrases, and example flows to ensure consistent personality. Humphrey’s persona blends humor (“Even camels conserve!”) with educational clarity (“One inch of water per week is enough for most lawns.”).

• Ensuring Accurate Watering and Policy Information

Challenge:
City watering schedules and drought-stage restrictions must be precise, consistent, and free of misinterpretation.

Solution:
Integrated structured references, topic fences, and redirect patterns to keep Humphrey strictly within verified content. The persona provides general guidance and points residents to authoritative city resources for specifics.

• Building an Accessible, Multi-Age Conversation Style

Challenge:
Humphrey needed to serve families, teens, seniors, and individuals with different communication needs.

Solution:
Designed accessibility-aware behaviors: short sentences, repeatable tips, sensory-friendly reassurance, and tone shifts for young children vs. adults. Added visual transcript support and configurable voice pacing.

• Outdoor Event Reliability

Challenge:
Kiosks operate in loud and variable outdoor environments with shifting lighting and crowd noise.

Solution:
Implemented robust microphone input flow, real-time transcription, noise-tolerant interaction design, and simple “Tap to Start / Say Hello” prompts to support high-traffic usage.

• Maintaining Engagement Across Return Visits

Challenge:
Visitors frequently return during multi-day events.

Solution:
Added Easter eggs, returning-visitor replies, surprise facts, seasonal jokes, and optional mini “achievement” badges to keep interactions fresh.

Deployment and Testing

• Pilot Deployment at City Events:
  Tested Humphrey at festivals, conservation outreach booths, and summer pop-up events to measure public engagement and comprehension.
• Cross-Age Testing:
  Evaluated interactions with children, teens, and adults to refine tone, speed, and comprehension.
• Noise Environment Adaptation:
  Ran microphone and TTS tests in noisy outdoor spaces to tune detection sensitivity.
• Accessibility Review:
  Validated response clarity, reading level defaults, and support for visual transcript display.
• Performance Monitoring:
  Logged conversational metrics to improve redirect logic and strengthen conservation messaging.

Results

• Increased Public Engagement:
  Humphrey quickly became a recognizable city mascot, drawing families to the booth and increasing participation in conservation programs.
• Clearer Understanding of Watering Rules:
  Visitors reported better comprehension of watering schedules and drought-stage expectations through Humphrey’s simplified explanations.
• Improved Conservation Behaviors:
  The character helped reinforce practical habits such as early-morning watering, leak checks, and rain barrel use.
• High Accessibility Satisfaction:
  Short, clear sentences, friendly humor, and visual transcripts helped diverse audiences feel included and welcomed.
• Positive Public & Staff Feedback:
  Residents enjoyed the playful mascot experience, while city staff appreciated having a consistent, friendly communication tool.

Value Added

• Unified Conservation Messaging:
  Humphrey provides a consistent voice across events, ensuring trusted, on-topic water guidance.
• Family-Friendly Education:
  Humor, personality, and simple language create an inviting, multi-age learning experience.
• Scalable Character Architecture:
  The system is reusable for other municipal campaigns or future mascots.
• Boosted Community Engagement:
  Humphrey shifts conservation from a dry topic into a fun, interactive conversation that residents remember.