ASK and You Shall Receive: Mastering AI Prompts Like a Pro

Getting hands on with AI to discover if what the pros are saying works with improving prompts. This month we looked at Copilot as our test bed, twisting it using a structure to improve our prompts. Let’s dive in and check it out…

We found a great approach that is simple, catchy and easy to remember, you just have to A.S.K.

A.S.K.

• Action: Explain what you want Copilot to do.
• Style: Describe the format you want the response presented in.
• Key Details: Set the stage with more context about your situation.

Here’s how you can build out one prompt to get better results by adding style and key details to get you more relevant responses.

Let’s test finding the “3 novel recommendations” example

The Standard Prompt: “Please give me three novel recommendations for my book club.”

This will give you a response and a good one BUT a generic response, lets enhance it with style and key details!

Enhanced Prompt: “Please give me three novel recommendations for my book club. Give your answer in a table that includes the book title, summary, and four discussion questions for each. My club consists of millennials, aged 30 to 35. We are avid readers who are interested in mystery, drama, and romance novels. We meet in-person weekly, so please give me a reading schedule corresponding to the meeting cadence.”

Let’s break it down:

1. Action: “Please give me three novel recommendations for my book club.”
   • This clearly states what you want the Ai to do.
2. Style: “Give your answer in a table that includes the book title, summary, and four discussion questions for each.”
   • This specifies the format you want the response in, making it easier to use and understand.
3. Key Details: “My club consists of millennials, aged 30 to 35. We are avid readers who are interested in mystery, drama, and romance novels. We meet in-person weekly, so please give me a reading schedule corresponding to the meeting cadence.”
   • These details provide context, ensuring the recommendations are tailored to your specific needs.

Why This Works

The basic prompt will give you a response, but by adding style and key details, you get more relevant and useful results. The acronym A.S.K. helps you remember to include these elements in your prompts.

The Results

The standard prompt gets the job done, included a little summary for each recommendation. You could certainly take this to your book club.

The enhanced prompt did in fact impress with a structured result and completed our initial task in the style we wanted it, incorporating our key details as well targeting our response. As you can see the results are much better after we A.S.K

Tips and Tricks

Some extra tips to further enhance your overall effectiveness of your prompt are:

• Be specific: The more specific your prompt, the better the results.
• Use clear language:
  • Avoid using “thing, stuff, it”

Instead of the word Utilise replace with “use”, Leverage replaced with “take advantage of”, Optimise replaced with “improve” or “make better”

Avoid jargon:

• Jargon: “We need to leverage synergy.”
• Clear: “We need to work together effectively.”

By incorporating the A.S.K. method into your prompt-building process, you can significantly enhance the quality and relevance of the responses you receive from GenAI. Using this approach in part, or in its entirety, we found the AI on the other end is hungry to provide you with what you want, how you want it.

Remember to be specific and clear, though the key to getting better results is to always A.S.K.

Happy prompting!