Applying prompts to GenAI/LLMs

System Overview (produced using ChatGPT) There's a moment many of us have had: you're looking at a competitor's website, then back at your own, and you just know something's different — but you can't quite put your finger on what. Traditionally, getting a rigorous answer meant hiring a consultant, running expensive user research, or spending hours doing it manually. What if you could get sharp, structured, comparative analysis in under ten minutes — without writing a single line of code? That's exactly what this project set out to prove. It started with a specific problem: comparing course websites to understand how they stacked up against a competitor. The goal wasn't just a surface-level look — it was to understand how real people, with different needs and backgrounds, would actually experience each site. The solution turned out to be a structured ChatGPT workflow built entirely in standard chat, using nothing more than a sequence of carefully designed ...

For many professionals, one of the hardest parts of any project isn’t the work itself—it’s the "blank page" problem. Whether you are drafting a project proposal, conducting a literature review , or  brainstorming  innovative solutions, getting started can be a significant mental hurdle. Generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot are often described as "content creators," but their true value for professionals lies in enhancing productivity. By applying specific prompting techniques, you can transform a vague idea into a well-structured, reference-supported document in a fraction of the time. Here is a three-step workflow to turn GenAI into your ultimate research and planning partner. 1. Brainstorming with "Personas" and "Templates" Don't just ask the AI for "ideas." To get professional results, you must give the AI a Persona (who it is acting as) and a Template (how you want the output to look). In our recent ex...

I recently came across a genuinely useful idea on Tom's Guide about using an “onion prompt” with AI to organise your schedule when you’re overwhelmed. If you haven’t seen it, I’d strongly recommend reading the original article — it explains the thinking behind the method and the psychological principles that make it effective: https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/i-use-the-onion-prompt-with-chatgpt-when-im-buried-in-tasks-it-cuts-through-clutter-in-seconds How I’ve adapted it I’m using Google Gemini rather than ChatGPT, and I used my task list from Google Keep instead of viewing my desktop. The tools are little different (but not too much), but the central ideas are the same: strip away the layers hiding your real priorities and let AI “peel back” your to-do list until only what truly matters remains. To make it easier, I copied my Google Keep list into a Google Doc and pasted it into the prompt. Prompt 1: Prioritising with the “Onion” Method Here’s the version I’m using (slightly adapt...

From Google Scholar to Project Ideas or Using AI to Map the Future of Your Research Generated as well by Google Gemini Have you ever looked at a researcher’s Google Scholar profile and felt overwhelmed? Between the long lists of citations and dense technical titles, "connecting the dots" of a decade-long career is a massive cognitive lift. Whether you are a student hunting for a dissertation topic or a professional scouting for a collaborator, understanding the trajectory of research is harder than reading the papers themselves. In my latest experiment, I used Google Gemini to see if it could bridge this gap. I gave it a specific challenge: Analyze my own research profile and design 10 compelling project ideas for a final-year Computer Science student. The Prompt: Turning Data into Direction The secret to a good AI output is giving it a clear "anchor." By providing a URL to a live dataset (my Scholar profile), I bypassed the need to copy-paste thousands of words....

Produced using Google Gemini In two previous posts I looked at using Generative AI to start producing  project ideas and refining one to be the start of the proposal, Previous blog posts GenAI Productivity: Ideas to project proposal 1 GenAI Productivity: Ideas to project proposal 2 One of the most significant cognitive hurdles for students is the transition from a high-level area of interest to a rigorously defined project specification. This "blank page" problem often leads to poorly scoped projects or a lack of alignment with current academic literature. Building on my previous experiments in prompt-mediated productivity, this post examines a structured workflow for using Large Language Models (LLMs)—specifically GPT-4o—to scaffold the development of a BSc Software Engineering project proposal. The Methodology: Multi-Stage Prompt Scaffolding Rather than requesting a single output, the workflow utilizes a recursive prompting strategy. This mirrors the iterative refinement pr...

Image created using DALL-E - love the bad spelling I want to explore using Generative AI to explore and compare websites. So I used using Google Gemini because of it its ability to work easily with websites.I choose UK three political party websites purely to compare like with like. Prompt 1: Analyse the following webpages website 1 https://www.conservatives.com/ , website 2 https://www.libdems.org.uk/  and website 3 https://labour.org.uk/ from a web user's perspective. For each website produce a report containing 2 tables. The first Table list issues with the site; for each issues provide at least three examples and then provide a list of potential solutions. Table 2 strengths of the site with each strength provide at least three examples. Add in any commentary Results It produced two tables per website and provided a summary comparing them at the end. Direct political statements were not produce. Now trying out personas and testing the website the politics side not filtered out ...

In previous blog post looked at creating tweets and turning a video transcript into a blog post using a large language model such as ChatGPT or gemini: https://llmapplied.blogspot.com/2024/02/using-chatgpt-data-analyst-to-create.html  https://llmapplied.blogspot.com/2024/02/google-gemini-video-transcript-to-blog.html In this post I am going to show using ChatGPT to two actions in a prompt :- summarise the transcript but then produce four potential posts with the videos URL and title. In this two prompts will be used.   Prompt 1: Will set up general rules for the 'tool':  " For the text that will be input. Summarise it to between 250 and 400 words. Also produce four tweets about the text that must include the URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g34jS24JWqw and the title "Swish for Prolog " The second prompt is the actual transcript cut and paste as a prompt. Summary of the text: This video introduces "Swish for Prolog," a tool for experimenting with Prol...