AI is rapidly expanding. Knowing how to use AI tools will be a common skill listed on job descriptions. And, AI only works as good as the prompt/Instructions given to it. We tried and tested multiple prompts : long and elaborate, short and concise, simple and complex. Here’s what works best for prompt writing?

If you are not one of the 6.3M people who have taken the Harvard’s CS50 course, the best snippet from the first ever lecture of the course is this :

The lesson : any algorithm needs to be precise. 🙂

Likewise, first and foremost, any prompt needs to be Precise. Period. No complex jargons. Just simple keywords.

Here’s what to include in a Prompt:

1.CONTEXT/PERSONA : WHO?

Start with who do you want the AI to think as? Give a persona as best as you can. Here’s some samples:

As a Product Manager with 10 years of experience in third party logistics…

As a school teacher for Math for grade 6….

You are an experienced business analyst with 15 years of budget estimation expertise….

As a product manager for our e-commerce platform…

2. ACTION, OUTCOME & CONSTRAINTS: WHAT?

What needs to be the outcome/action of the AI? Be very precise in what you need the AI to generate for you. Usually, we just throw a generic prompt at the AI like the following one, expanding the expanse and search that AI does to get a non satisfactory answer.

“Analyse recent user feedback data and identify top painpoints, and propose feature ideas.”

Give a step by step action plan for what the AI tool needs to do and then add constraints. Constraints are nothing but defined limits within which you need the AI to generate answers. They could be:

• specific output formats like descriptions, comparison tables etc
• length/number requirements like top 5 trends, 500 words, 10 min recipe etc
• any particular rules or limitation like elaborate actions in the phases for the project suggested from idea to design to development to training to deploy

Here’s how we will rewrite the prompt “Analyse recent user feedback data and identify top painpoints, then propose feature ideas.” to get the most from any AI tool :

As a product manager of our ecommerce firm, analyze our recent user feedback data from the attached report and identify the top three pain points customers are experiencing. Then, propose three innovative feature ideas to address these issues, considering factors such as implementation complexity, potential impact on user satisfaction, and alignment with our long-term product strategy. For each feature idea, provide a brief description, expected benefits, and potential challenges we might face during development.

3. SAMPLE : HOW?

The constraints should be used as much as possible to define how we need the outcome to look like. We can also provide a sample report. This can be an article or post. It will show how we want the AI tool to tailor the output. And, the results will be similar to the sample. This is optional though, but, it’s good if you want to follow a certain sample already available. If we do need to provide a sample, here’s what we will add to the prompt :

As a product manager of our ecommerce firm, analyze our recent user feedback data from the attached report and identify the top three pain points customers are experiencing. Then, propose three innovative feature ideas to address these issues, considering factors such as implementation complexity, potential impact on user satisfaction, and alignment with our long-term product strategy. For each feature idea, provide a brief description, expected benefits, and potential challenges we might face during development. Here’s a sample document, generate the result similar to this format [add as attachment or detail it in the prompt itself].

Pro Tips:

• Keep prompts concise yet detailed
• Use clear, straightforward language
• Focus on your specific objective
• Provide additional context if needed

Crafting the perfect prompt is an art that improves with practice. Each iteration helps you understand how to communicate more effectively with AI tools. AI tools work as best as the prompt/ instruction given to them.