ChatGPT is one of the very few products that blew my mind. I use it daily as my assistant to help me create and learn.
One of the use cases is to use ChatGPT, Claude, or any other Large Language Model to create something that you have very little knowledge about. These AI models are not experts (yet) and cannot innovate and generate new information, but they can be helpful in many ways.
The technology is still new and usually, it generates very generic answers if you don’t provide details. To utilize its power in generating a high-quality output, I don’t blindly ask it to create something with one sentence prompt.
Instead, I examine the problem using first principles and questioning to find key elements of the problem. Then using those key insights, I ask ChatGPT to expand and format the end result as I see fit.
I use its advantages to write faster instead of relying on it completely. You can think of it as an assistant. The more details you provide, the more accurate and valuable is the generated output.
How to prompt ChatGPT to create a complete design brief
A design brief is an essential part of web design and development. It outlines the problem, the goals, and everything that relates to your expectations, brand, and preferences.
Here are the main points that a well-crafted design brief has to cover.
- Define the problem. Why do you need a website? What is the goal?
- Define the user profile. Who’s going to use your website?
- Define the site map: what is the website structure and what pages do you need?
- Define the spirit of the website: how does it speak with your problem/brand/audience?
- Define the budget for content, design, and development.
- Define the timeframe: when do you need the website launched?
- Define technical preferences: do you need any software preferences?
Now that I have the structure, I can fill in the information that the AI can later use to generate the design brief.
- Problem: My company, Acme Inc, acquired a travel blog with 100k organic visitors/month that I want to redesign and turn into a hub for travel suggestions. The current website looks very old and unorganized. It is also not mobile-friendly and unresponsive. It provides a bad user experience and while users find the content helpful, they bounce immediately. The current website is built in WordPress and I’d like to move it to Webflow.
- User profile: People from mid-30s to mid-50s who want to plan their vacation. However, there’s a diverse mix of people of different ages and countries. Additional research is required to analyze current analytics and define the user profile more precisely.
- Sitemap: My initial idea is to keep the directory, add a proper home page, and create membership accounts so that users can save destinations and come back to it later.
- Spirit: I see the website as modern and user-friendly where the content and destination photography are the main subjects to users’ attention.
- Budget: My current budget is $5000-$8000 for UX/UI design and $5000 for development.
- Timeline: I want to launch the new website in 2 months. I need a breakdown of how long UX, UI, and development process will take.
- Software: I want the design to be created in Figma. I want the website to be developed with Webflow.
With these defined points, we can now ask ChatGPT to create a design brief and add any potentially missing information.
Here’s the prompt I am going to use:
Let's look at the unedited design brief generated by ChatGPT:
I think it’s not bad. The AI expanded on my points and added some missing parts.
After reading the generated brief, I realized that I missed a few things, so I am either gonna edit the initial prompt to include those points or directly edit the output.
Here’s what I forgot to add:
- Design process: I want to be aligned with the design process during the early phase so that everything is predictable regarding the layout and the aesthetics of the website.
On the other hand, I found it very helpful that ChatGPT added some missing information. I forgot to cover topics like content strategy, SEO, maintenance, and analytics.
Good job, ChatGPT!
What’s next?
Once you are satisfied with the output, send it to the designer and ask for feedback. There might be some specific information that both you and AI didn’t add. A well-formulated design brief is an essential part of the quality of the final outcome. It’s a document that creates a certain structure for the website and also lets you evaluate the final outcome so that it fits every criterion that you set.
If you need help with formulating a design brief, send me an email to ayk@maray.ai and I’ll be happy to guide you through the process.
Sincerely,
Ayk
