How do you write effective prompts?

When it comes to writing effective AI prompts, many people think it's as simple as "make it clear". But it's not - it's like teaching a child who is very smart but lacks common sense - you have to give enough context without being too wordy. Take the previous case of building a website with Bolt.new, those users who run marathons certainly can't imagine, behind those professional training plan page, in fact, with the "color scheme of dark blue + gray, emphasizing the sense of science and technology and professionalism," such as the prompt to teach out of the word.

Cue word is the AI's navigator

Last year, there is an interesting experiment: two groups of people were using the same AI tools to design web pages, the first group only give "do an e-commerce site" such a command, the results generated by the same page; the second group is a detailed description of the target user is "25-35 years old, favoring the minimalist style of the urban woman ", but also specified that "the display of goods to use card-type layout, the main color Morandi system", the final product can be directly online. You see, the difference lies in whether or not the AI is equipped with an accurate "navigator".

The Secret Recipe for Good Prompt Words

I have studied hundreds of excellent cases, and found that those eye-catching results often hide three secrets behind the prompts: first, "role-playing", such as "assume you are a UX designer with 10 years of experience"; second, "constraints", such as "describe in no more than 200 words"; and most importantly, "emotional cues", such as "to make the user feel that the user should not use more than 200 words"; and most importantly, "emotional cues". "constraints", such as "describe in no more than 200 words"; and most importantly, "emotional cues", such as "make the user feel The most important is "emotional cues", such as "make users feel warm and reliable" - this is especially useful when generating marketing copy.

Last week I was helping a friend to debug Bolt.new and it was even more interesting, I wanted a techy look but it always came out too cold and hard. Then I changed the word "professionalism" in the prompt to "professionalism with affinity", and there was a quantum leap immediately. It seems that AI, like us humans, also needs subtle emotional guidance.

Skills learned from failure

And of course, failure experience is valuable. I remember once I greedily stuffed all the requirements into one cue word, and the AI gave me a hodgepodge. Now I've learned my lesson, and I use the "feeding in stages" strategy: first define the framework, and then add detailed modules step by step, just like Lego. Some masters will also play "cue word chain", so that the conclusion generated by the previous AI as the input for the next cue - this trick in the complex task is simply twice as effective.

At the end of the day, writing cues is like doing a tango with AI. You go in and it goes out, and it returns as much energy as you give it. Behind those seemingly perfect results, there are often dozens of trial-and-error processes of "adjusting the description again". But then again, watching the initial vague ideas gradually take shape in repeated debugging, this sense of accomplishment is much stronger than just copying and pasting, don't you think?