Learn ChatGPT Prompt Design

A well-crafted prompt is able to ingest any amount of explanation about a topic and turn it into something people will actually take the time to read.

Below is an example prompt we use to build AI assessments. The purple background is the whole prompt and the white highlight is what you customize.

This whole prompt works off of a definition of something that a customer defines. I kept it short to save you the time, but in the section where the customer defines tech addiction, they could go on for 1000’s of words if they wanted to, if that’s comfortable.

Or they could say very little.

Either way this prompt would transform what they said into a perfect quiz result based on what we know a perfect quiz result to be, every single time, without fail, instantly.

Now if you compare that to several years (literally) it might take a human to think about how to condense down their thoughts into a perfect quiz result, you can see the power in this prompt.

ChatGPT Prompt for turning your raw text into usable content

To craft a prompt like this one you need two things.

1. Open-ended section to put in raw text. A section of the prompt where you can say as much or as little as you want about a topic.
2. An output format you want the text to transform into. An exact output you want the text to be transformed into, complete with how to structure the output down to a word-level of granularity.

Once you do that you can take any information of any length and have it output in the same way every single time, like a machine turning raw metal into beautiful panels for a car.

ChatGPT Prompt for expanding notes into usable content

In some cases you have a few bullet points or jotted down notes and you want to turn those into something you can use. For this prompt you will use two parts.

1. Expand on your notes
2. Reformat the text into usable format

Let’s look at another example prompt we use in production.

In this prompt we are taking some bullet points about each of the quiz outcomes and expanding them into usable quiz outcomes that will speak to the quiz taker directly. As long as you give ChatGPT the ideal outcome format it can expand jotted down notes into fully formed outcomes.

Note: The granularity of the ideal outcome format can be as dialed in as you want. In my experience you can experiment with the following.

• Format (Length, lists, sentence structure, order, etc.)
• Tone (Fun, exciting, happy, upbeat, informational, academic, etc.)
• Perspective (First, Second, Third person)
• Content (Describe, expand on, provide examples, give context, explain, etc.)
• Recommend (Products, services, learning resources, etc.)

Within the ideal output format for ChatGPT you can direct it with any and all of the above to dial in exactly how the output looks. The list above are the ways I’ve found ChatGPT to understand dialing in output formats but you can experiment with finding more.

ChatGPT Prompt to Start from Nothing and Create Usable Content

When you want to start from nothing and generate usable content that works too. It just takes a few extra steps.

Here’s what you do.

1. Generate information about the topic
2. Rework that information to focus on what you want to talk about
3. Reformat the information into usable format

Let’s look at it. First we will generate raw information about our topic. We will start with what we know, highlighted in white, which is just what we do and what our end goal is. Then we run a prompt that specifically tells ChatGPT what information to gather.

Here’s what ChatGPT understands for information gathering.

• Descriptions – ask it to describe something
• Lists of facts/characteristics – ask it to list facts about a topic (will sometimes be incorrect FYI)
• Attributes – ask it to list the attributes of something
• Personality traits – ask it to describe a type of person
• Perspectives – ask it to provide a perspective on a topic
• Definitions – ask it to define a topic

So we start by asking it to generate information with some or all of those parameters.

Next we focus the information on what we want to talk about. In this case I want to focus on work-related stress rather than just general stress, so I will tell ChatGPT to rework the information provided and have it pertain just to work related stress.

You can do this as many times as you want until the information reflects what you want to see.

Here is a list of ways you can focus the content.

• Topics – tell ChatGPT to focus on particular sub-sets of information
• Time-frames – tell ChatGPT to focus on recent information
• Audience – tell ChatGPT to focus the information towards a certain audience type
• Voice -tell ChatGPT to speak in a certain voice I.E. Speak as a marketer

Those are the parameters I have tested but you can explore more on your own.

I want the outcomes to be more specific to work-related stress. Can you rewrite them to focus on work-related stress but don’t change the format.

Once the information is dialed in towards the audience you are trying to reach, you can reformat it into usable format. In this case I’m reformatting to quiz outcomes but you can reformat in any way. Here are some examples.

• Blog post format
• Social post format
• Memo
• Executive Summaries
• Quizzes

Whatever format you need the text output to be in, just specify the output format with hyper-detail.

Learning ChatGPT is a process

Hopefully this post helps you on your learning journey. It’s a long process to develop the skill, I would recommend regular practice on practical applications just like how you’d learn anything new. The three prompts outlined above are great places to start because they’re pretty universal use-cases you could start implementing to your workflow and put into practice.