Campfire #35: How to use chat GPT as a freelance product designer?

This is how AI might be used to assist designers and freelancers in their workflows.

As Chat GPT continues to gain attention, many have assumed that it will eventually displace Google or Stack Overflow and possibly threaten blue-collar jobs.

I wanted to look more closely at how this artificial intelligence technology might assist designers and freelancers in their workflows, even though it can be difficult to predict the future. Here's what I tried:

Freelancing:

1. Cold emails

2. Proposals

3. Client communication

Product design:

1. UX copy

2. Ideation

3. Long-form text summarization

Writing cold emails

I asked Chat GPT to write a cold email to the potential prospect using this prompt:

“Write me a cold email to a qualified lead pitching website design services with a call to action to schedule a call with me.”

Here’s what I’ve got as a result of this prompt:

The results are very impressive! And even though I don’t recommend using this exact text to write your emails, this could be a huge time saver to help you get started and give you inspiration for your own custom message.

Proposals

Writing proposals is always a big struggle for many freelancers, especially if you’re just getting started. Let’s ask Chat GPT to help us write one:

“Write me a short proposal for a client lead offering a website design services for $5000.”

Here’s what we’ve got from our AI assistant:

Client communication

As freelancers, we get to work with different types of clients. You can utilize Chat GPT to help you write responses to different questions or concerns that clients might have.

Let’s say your client asks you for more iterations on the website designs that you’ve created that are out of scope. Here’s how you can use AI to help you write a response to that:

“Write me a response to the client who wants to make more iterations on their website design that are already out of scope.”

Here’s what we get:

Pretty decent, right?

Writing UX copy

I’ve already used AI to help me with my job as a product designer in various ways. But one of the common use cases that I find myself using is writing UX copy. Most often, I work on projects from very complex industries from healthcare services to data automation systems. And the most challenging task for me as a designer is to write copy that would be helpful to the users of that industry.

This is where Chat GPT can be handy. This is what I’ve asked:

“Write an error message to explain to a user that the data can’t be fetched from the backend API.”

Here’s what it suggested:

Long-form text summarization

I have found a very interesting way of using Chat GPT to help designers make better portfolios (yes!). I'm sure you're like me and always want to add more details to the project you've been working on when presenting it in your portfolio. We try to add as much text as possible to not miss any important detail.

The good news is that now we can throw all of our thoughts into AI and ask it to summarize the long-form text into a few sentences.

I'm not gonna poke at anyone's portfolio today. Instead, I can show you the power of summarizing using How to Make Smart Decisions Without Getting Lucky by Farnam Street.

Conclusion

AI will not replace designers’ jobs, but those who leverage the technology will be far better at doing their job at a higher level and speed.

As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) increases, it becomes more crucial for professionals to develop good communication skills and incorporate this technology into their workflows.

The results of the experiments mentioned above might still need some tweaking, but they can be a good place to start for speeding up tasks and activities.

To stay ahead in a world that is increasingly dominated by technology, don't fall behind; start learning how to use AI to your benefit right away.