Before you start making your chatbot, you need to decide on their personality.

• What is their name?
  
• Where do they live?
  
• Are they happy? serious? funny? shy? friendly?

Start a new Scratch project, and delete the cat sprite so that your project is empty. You can find the online Scratch editor at jumpto.cc/scratch-new.

Choose one of these character sprites, and add them to your project:

Choose a backdrop that fits your chatbot’s personality. Here’s an example, although yours doesn’t have to look like this:

Click on your chatbot character, and add this code:

Click your chatbot to test it out. After you are asked your name, type it into the box along the bottom of the stage.

Your chatbot simply replies What a lovely name! every time. You can personalise your chatbot’s reply, by making use of the user’s answer. Change the chatbot’s code, so that it looks like this:

To create the last block, you’ll need to first drag on a green join block, and drag it on to the say block.

You can then change the text hello to say Hi, and drag the light blue answer block (from the ‘Sensing’ section) onto the text world.

Test out this new program. Does it work as you expected? Can you fix any problems that you can see? (Hint: you can try adding in a space somewhere!)

It may be that you want to store the user’s name in a variable, so that you can use it again later. Create a new variable called name. If you’ve forgotten how to do this, the ‘Balloons’ project will help you.

The information that you entered is already stored in a special variable called answer. Go to the Sensing group of blocks and click the answer block so that a tick appears. The current value in answer should then be shown on the top-left of the stage.

Once you’ve created your new variable, make sure that your chatbot’s code looks like this:

If you test your program again, you’ll notice that the answer is stored in the name variable, and is shown in the top-left of the stage. The name variable should now contain the same value as the answer variable.

If you’d rather not see the variables on your stage, you can click the tick next to the variable names in the ‘Scripts’ tab to hide them.

Let’s get your chatbot to ask the user a question which has a yes or no answer. Here’s an example, but you can change the question if you like:

Notice that now you’ve stored the user’s name in a variable, you can use it as much as you like.

To test this program properly, you’ll need to test it twice - once typing no as your answer, and once typing yes. You should only get a response from your chatbot if you answer yes.

The trouble with your chatbot is that it doesn’t give a reply if the user answers no. You can fix this, by changing the if block to an if/else block, so that your code now looks like this:

If you test your code, you’ll now see that you get a response when you answer yes or no. Your chatbot should reply with That's great to hear! when you answer yes, but will reply with Oh no! if you type anything other than yes (else means ‘otherwise’).

You can put any code inside an if or else block, not just code to make your chatbot speak. For example, you can change the chatbot’s costume to match the response.

If you have a look at your chatbot’s costumes, you may see that there is more than one. (If not, you can always add more yourself!)

You can use these costumes as part of your chatbot’s response, by adding this code:

Test out your program, and you should see your chatbot’s face change depending on the answer you give.

Add another backdrop to your stage, for example the ‘moon’ backdrop.

You can now program your chatbot to change location, by adding this code to your chatbot:

You also need to make sure that your chatbot is outside when you start talking to it. Add this block to the top of your chatbot code:

Test your program, and answer yes when asked if you want to go to the moon. You should see that the chatbot’s location has changed.

Does your chatbot change location if you type no? What about if you type I'm not sure?

You can also add this code inside your if block, to make your chatbot jump up and down 4 times if the answer is yes:

Test your code again. Does your chatbot jump up and down if you answer yes?