How to Use ChatGPT to Speed up Product Design Work

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

Okay, I don't know about you, but my winter break was dominated by news of ChatGPT and various reactions ranging from outright hatred to complete fear. And it is here to stay.

But instead of panicking that AI will replace us designers, let's use ChatGPT to simplify our lives.

1. My first prompt was "create a colour palette for an Executive Coaching company." The only description I gave was "serious." I got a palette consisting of 5 colours with HEX codes and the meaning behind each colour. ChatGPT gave me a mix of dark and more accent and light colours. However, it didn't specify which ones are primary and which are accent colours. It would be helpful if it could visualize these colours.

This is a visualization of the colour palette. Earthy yet professional and serious.

2. Next way to use ChatGPT is for layout ideas, which could save you hours searching for references on Behance, Dribble, Mobbin Design and other websites. The response was simple; it would be nice to see examples and visuals. Pro tip: if something is unclear, you can ask a follow-up question or complicate the scenario. Continue reading for the next use case.

ChatGPT can provide ideas for layouts, but they are basic.

3. If you are UX/UI or Product Designer, you must perform User Research. ChatGPT can help us with writing surveys and crafting user interview questions. Let's test how smart ChatGPT is in this regard.

I asked ChatGPT to develop survey questions for collecting information on Canadian Professionals' job search — how long it took them and how they found their jobs.

I was impressed that ChatGPT added questions to the survey I didn't ask for (such as the challenges and resources that helped them) and provided potential answers. You can complicate scenarios but start with a basic prompt.

4. Next use case is more complex. You can use ChatGPT as a starting point for your user flow. So, I came up with a random application idea to test it out: a simple insurance application where users should be able to submit invoices for reimbursement. I was surprised with the response — some of the steps were quite detailed.

You have a detailed step-by-step user flow for your application or product.

Honestly, I wouldn't be able to think through all these points in just 45 seconds that it took ChatGPT to come up with this user flow. For example, I only thought about submitting the invoice, but it included Status Tracking. You can ask follow-up questions, such as what fields should be in the Invoice Submission form given a specific scenario (for example, the user wants reimbursement for a chiropractor service). But I followed up with, "What if the user needs to check the insurance plan in the above application?" — which was today's pain point when checking the Canada Life Insurance plan.

The next thing I think about in User Flow is an alternative flow — what can go wrong? So I asked ChatGPT to give me potential errors in this user flow.

All potential errors to include in your design!

ChatGPT can save you at least 30 minutes of spending on your user flow. You can take its initial response as a base and improve it yourself.

5. Need ideas on creative names for your app, product, or project? ChatGPT can also help with this. Although, I was only somewhat impressed with the names it provided. See them below.

These names seemed dull and obvious.

So, I clarified my request. And voila! Continue reading further for more use cases to simplify your life as a Designer.

These are the options that I received. Need to be more enticing and memorable. But anyway, a good starting point.

I asked for more creative names, but they were similar to the first response. Well, these are the limitations of AI.

6. You can also save time for A/B testing. For example, writing a test scenario can be daunting for more creative and visual UI designers, but still an essential part of UX design. I asked ChatGPT to develop a test scenario for a product that matches influencers with brands. Here is what ChatGPT responded with:

ChatGPT gave a generic answer, but I've asked ChatGPT to specify Step 3, where I got more concrete testing steps.

As you can see, ChatGPT can help you as a designer save time on specific tasks. I should have mentioned this since you probably already know: you can use it for writing product specifications, descriptions and copy. ChatGPT is based on neural networks developed using Machine-Learning and natural language processing. Here is what ChatGPT said: "ChatGPT was trained on a large corpus of text data, using a technique called unsupervised learning, where the model learns to predict the next word in a sequence given the previous words." — so using it for copywriting is going to help you a lot!

Don't be afraid to play with new emerging tech — Designers who adapt quickly will always be in demand :)

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