Sparki

My grandfather and I use to draw cartoons together. A few times a week, we’d sit at the kitchen table and draw our favorite characters before going out to the garage to do what he called ‘boy’s work’. Grandpa was a retired draftsman so he had some pretty good illustration skills. I was pretty good too. Perhaps the best I’ve ever been.

Grandpa was a hard man but had a soft spot for children and the whimsical characters that entertained and educated them. He often drew Mickey Mouse and other characters from his generation. I mostly specialized in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and other characters from mine. Occasionally, he would fantasize about being the creator of Mickey Mouse or a character just as popular. Like many kids, I would fantasize about the same.

Flash forward thirty years and I’m working as a lead user experience consultant for Southern Company. I’m also the frequent caretaker of our family dog, Cindy. Named by my sister, Cindy is short for the fairytale princess, Cinderella. She is not, however, very ‘princesslike’. Rather, she is tenacious, hyper, and scrappy. She likes to fetch, get dirty and is obsessed with hunting rodents. One might say she is more of a ‘tomboy’ than a princess.

My day-to-day mostly consists of designing apps for Southern Company and taking Cindy for long walks on Atlanta’s Beltline. Our walks mostly consist of Cindy dragging me from one thing she finds exciting to the next, which is pretty much everything. People, kids, birds, cats, other dogs, and especially rodents.

Most of my Southern Company projects are apps for customer service, logistics, and the many protocols required to operate one of the largest energy conglomerates in the U.S. Every once in a while, a more unique project would wind up on my desk, which is where the story of Sparki begins.

Southern Company had begun experimenting with an internal chatbot to assists staff with various work-related tasks. I was asked to create an avatar for this bot. I immediately went with the idea of a dog for the obvious reason that I, like many, love dogs. Also, studies show people are less critical of AIs that don’t attempt to be exceedingly human. Humanoid chatbots set high expectations that they usually can’t exceed. This too would be a very young AI with much to learn. This chatbot would require quite a bit of training.

So a dog seemed the best choice and Cindy would certainly be a source of inspiration. I also thought the dog should be electric since Southern Company is in the business of electricity. This combined with brand colors and a lightning bolt eyepatch led to the Southern Company robot dog, otherwise known as ‘Sparki’. The spelling of Sparki is a reference to Apple’s well-known AI personality, Siri. Because it’s also a classic dog name that signifies electricity I thought it was very fitting.

One could type a question into a chat window where Sparki would quickly fetch the answer. One could also feed Sparki information to enhance its machine learning. Aside from the brand colors and eyepatch, this version of Sparki was quite different from what it is today. This version of Sparki was a bit more aggressive, sharper, and perhaps more masculine-looking. This version was not intended for children. It was for my engineering colleagues, who were mostly adult men.

Sparki had a pretty good run as a chatbot avatar but was eventually replaced by another that most of the engineers preferred. I think the avatar that replaced Sparki was a not-so-subtle reference to a popular Marvel character, but I digress.

So Sparki retired from a short career as a chatbot but remained a lovable character in the back of my mind. For years I would think about Sparki whenever I saw Southern Company’s educational outreach programs. I felt Sparki would be the perfect representative for the company’s initiative to educate kids on science, technology, and conservation.

Now that I was thinking more about Sparki as a character for kids, it was becoming more kid-friendly. In my mind, Sparki was becoming cuter, less aggressive, and more child-like. Many characteristics of Sparki were changing, except one big one.

I always just assumed that Sparki was a boy. Why is that? The character was largely inspired by my female dog, Cindy. Also, Sparki is a robot. It’s a character that is neither a boy nor a girl. Yet, I still assigned Sparki a boy-like identity. I suppose this was simply a matter of my social programming. Growing up with the overwhelming representation of men working in science and technology. Doing ‘boys work’, as Grandpa would say.

I realized this generalization was a problem for a variety of reasons. For starters, there’s still a great absence of women working in science and technology. Young girls are still not encouraged as much as boys are to pursue these disciplines. I think this is unfortunate and didn’t want Sparki to perpetuate this cultural issue. I didn’t want young girls to assume Sparki is a boy, for boys, and therefore, doing ‘boy’s work’. Grandpa may have been perplexed by this notion thirty years ago, but if he were here today, I think he would understand.

While I didn’t want Sparki to be perceived as a boy, I felt it shouldn’t necessarily be perceived as a girl either. After all, Sparki is a robot so it technically has no gender. Why should a fictitious robot dog be perceived as anything but just that?

This got me thinking about how we are in the habit of assigning gender to objects that have none. Our digital assistants all seem to be subservient female avatars like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana. Doesn’t this reinforce gender roles much like the lack of female representation in science? I think it might be worth having these conversations as we’re increasingly interacting with artificial beings.

With all this in mind, I saw new potential in Sparki. I thought it would be interesting if this character could inspire some discussion on these topics of gender identity. But more importantly, I now saw Sparki as a character that could represent everyone on the spectrum. Because like science, Sparki is for everyone. Boys, girls, and however else one identifies.

I now had a solid idea of what I wanted Sparki to be, but my illustration skills are not what they were in the days of Grandpa’s garage. I needed a talented illustrator to bring Sparki to life. Someone who could interpret my ideas and rough drafts into high-fidelity illustrations. Luckily, a former coworker and friend of mine has this sort of talent.

Jennifer Adekyn is a talented web developer and artist who commands a great variety of illustration styles. I was particularly attracted to her original characters that combine a classic Disney style with a bit of anime. It was just the type of aesthetic I was looking for. Also, I thought she would appreciate the idea of Sparki.

The first thing Jenn said when she saw my crude illustrations of Sparki is, “He’s cute.” I thought this was funny and the perfect setup for the conversation at hand. I explained the concept of Sparki as a genderless character and why I think it’s important. She seemed intrigued and was fortunately available for a side-project. So we got to work.

Working with Jen was nearly effortless, as she has a great ability to interpret verbal direction into detailed visuals. We engaged in an iterative process to explore ideas that would visually communicate the subjects and values Sparki represents. Small details, like solar panel ears, were chosen to represent Southern Company’s commitment to renewable energy. Robotic joints and decals would be used to represent aspects of science and technology.

And then of course there was the task of making Sparki appear gender-neutral. This would be a challenge as Sparki would also have to represent Southern Company. This gave us some constraints in respect to a color palette. The company’s brand colors are blue, light blue, red, and green. The blue colors tend to be prominent in all the company’s visual media so I felt they should be here too.

With this, we had to focus more on facial features, proportions, and expressions to create some ambiguity. Sparki would receive big green expressive eyes, similar to those used for young girls in Japanese anime. This combined with subtitle eyelashes, a smaller nose, and a red collar all helped this mostly blue character appear to not simply be a boy.

I felt Sparki was ready to present to colleagues involved in Southern Company’s programs for education, community outreach, diversity, and inclusion. I compiled a list of key individuals in these programs and sent our illustrations along with the following message.