As generative AI advances show no sign of slowing down, neither do the growing uses for it as experience designers.
One that I’m growing fond of is the ability to build working prototypes for L&D ideas, apps and other creations.
No doubt, as I have, you spend a lot of time trying to help stakeholders visualise what ‘x’ thing could look like.
This normally involves scrappy drawings in a notebook or standing in front of people to do your best Bob Ross impression on a whiteboard.
People nod, yet it’s pretty hard to see how your idea would work and how users engage with it. However, what if I told you, a tool exists where you can turn your ideas and scribbles into a semi-working prototype in 15 minutes? One you can share with users to get instant feedback.
Sounds like a scam, I know.
Thankfully, it’s quite real. I want to show you a handy feature from Claude (another LLM like ChatGPT) to achieve this.
Here’s how it works.
Getting started with Claude
Claude is another conversational AI tool like ChatGPT.
It works exactly the same way apart from a few features. Most of it’s team is full of ex-Open AI employees (ChatGPTs creator) and backed by a huge investment from Amazon.
Before we unleash you with building apps, you need to do the following:
- Visit Claude’s website and sign-up for a free account
- Access your profile on the left-hand side of the screen at the bottom with your email/username
- Click ‘settings’ to access your ‘profile’ screen. Here, scroll to the bottom of this page and select ‘enable artifacts’
Artifacts is what we’re going to use to build interactive prototypes of your ideas. This allows Claude to generate code snippets, text documents, and loads of different designs.
The advantage is that it enables you to view semi-working apps in real time and tweak these.
How to transform your ideas into working prototypes
I’m not going to write out the step by step playbook here.
Instead, you can follow along to get everything you need with me in this video:
What can you use Claude Artifacts for?
A bunch of stuff.
Remember those whiteboard sessions and scribbles in your notebook from earlier? You can turn those into something a stakeholder can actually play with.
Instead of saying, “here’s how it can work in my notebook scribbles” you can say “I’ve built a simple prototype to give you a feel of how it could work, try it here”.
A couple ideas you could build:
- A content library
- A low-level LMS or LXP interfaces – handy if you wish to see how people behave with a new experience
- Landing pages
- Course pages
- Simple apps
- Websites
There’s much more you can do.
Everyone can build, but not everyone is a builder
As always, the power of new tools is in the hand of a skilled practitioner.
You will be able to build something of more value than the everyday employee as you know the context of your field. Look at this type of tool as another design assistant in how you build L&D tech solutions.
The barrier for entry to build stuff is getting lower every week.
That doesn’t mean everyone is a builder though (more on that in the future).
Before you go… 👋
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