DevelopmentCustomer support

Armor-Dilloz Support Lab

Armor-Dilloz armadillo logo.
Armor-Dilloz, the product business behind the support prototype.

I've answered a lot of questions about sealant and riding products. Support Lab is a private prototype where I turn that experience into software and try the conversations before any customer sees them. The product knowledge is mine, and so are the application rules and the way the model turns that knowledge into a reply.

Questions arrive half-finished

Someone asks how much sealant to use and doesn't mention what's already in the tire. Another rider knows their board but not its tire dimensions. A worried customer paraphrases a tracking message instead of quoting it.

That's normal conversation. People give you the part they think matters, and a good reply helps fill in the rest without turning the exchange into a form.

Test cases I keep coming back to

In the lab I can ask a customer-style question, follow up and correct a detail, and the earlier facts stay available for the next answer. A few situations make especially good tests.

A plain "yes" should answer the question the person just saw, and not some other question the software had in mind. If someone corrects the type of tire, every later piece of advice should reflect the correction. A shipping question has to deal with the fact that a label can exist before the carrier has the package, then explain what information would settle it.

A warm tone only helps if the guidance underneath fits the tire and circumstances the person described.

Sealed off from the store

Support Lab runs on test situations. It doesn't look up real orders, issue refunds or arrange replacements, which leaves me free to study the conversation without it turning into a customer transaction.

The review tools let me rate a specific reply, note what would have helped and come back to it later, which beats a vague sense that a conversation went well or badly. The chat itself has quick questions and a compact input, and it can be minimized and reopened without losing the exchange.

Cory BoehneLet's talk
Creative full-body development portrait of Cory Boehne
03SOFTWARE CASE STUDIES

Software I've built
and how it works.

I've built tools for maintenance teams and company finances, applications that run on local models, image and story software, and games with a little AI in the cast. The problems range from a missing zero in a spreadsheet to a suspect who mustn't reveal the answer.

Building software since the late nineties.

Business tools, games and image software.

Three places
to start.

A Maximo assistant that has to know which release you run. An arcade where one local model plays a different part in every game. An image tool I built while making the portraits on this site.

Dr. Maximo brand character holding a tablet.
AI and reliability

Dr. Maximo

A web application for Maximo and reliability questions that shows its sources, keeps track of the release and reads approved system data without changing it.

Inside Dr. Maximo
Fifteen illustrated game worlds from Tiny AI Arcade.
Interactive experiments

Tiny AI Arcade

Small games and practical tools where the rules stay in charge and the model plays a defined part: suspect, narrator or hint-giver.

Enter the arcade
Personal portrait of Cory, created in Image StudioAI portrait of Cory, created in Image StudioRiding portrait of Cory, created in Image Studio
Creative software

Image Studio

A private image application for keeping one person recognizable across many scenes, with reference roles, saved recipes, masked edits and transparent output.

Inside Image Studio
The Story Scrolls
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in Story Scrolls, with John Tenniel’s original illustrations.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in Story Scrolls, with John Tenniel’s original illustrations.
Creative software

An illustrated library with room to make your own.

An illustrated public-domain library, several ways to read and a guided workshop for writing and illustrating a story of your own.

Open The Story Scrolls
  1. Dealerships

    Selling cars showed me what finance and sales software had to do.

  2. Professional Software Systems

    Finance and insurance software for smaller dealerships.

  3. IBM Maximo

    Asset-management work, starting with barcoding software.

Before the current tools

Dealership software led me to Maximo.

I was building, selling and repairing computers by my mid-teens, and did early web work after that. Then came a stretch as an electronics supervisor at OfficeMax and several years selling cars at Casa Chevrolet in Albuquerque.

The car lot turned out to be good preparation. At Professional Software Systems, I built finance and insurance software for smaller dealerships, including buy-here-pay-here loan handling and sales tools. One of those tools compared amortization scenarios to show when a different use of a customer's money could benefit both the buyer and the dealership. I had worked the sales floor, so I knew what those screens needed to show.

The oddest problem involved driver's license numbers. Some states built their identifiers with Soundex patterns, and each state had its own variations. Inside the dealership workflow, we reverse-engineered those patterns and worked through the exception rules one state at a time.

A contracting connection then brought me into IBM Maximo, writing barcoding software. After that I left the industry for a while to travel and study, starting at San Juan College around 2005 and moving on to New Mexico Tech. Banetti brought me back to software.

How that experience grew into technology leadership

All the software stories.

Explore the applications, experiments and server work, including the private prototypes and the decisions that shaped them.

11 entries
Related work

The design, the businesses
and the skills behind the builds.

There's more to a project than its software: the identity it needs, the business it serves and the people who have to use it.

Build something

What needs
building?

Tell me what the software needs to do, what data it touches and where the current process breaks down. I'm glad to work through the details with you.

Tell me what needs building