Learn how to write effective AI prompts by being specific, defining your goals and refining your approach based on your output.
AI prompts
Building AI prompts, or prompt engineering, involves formulating defined instructions for an AI tool with the aim of generating targeted outputs or completing a specific task.
It is important to consider the following when formulating prompts:
- Different AI tools work best with different types of prompts.
- The quality of any AI output is determined by how well a prompt is structured.
Use the following principles to better enhance your prompt building and retrieve more relevant AI outputs.
Be specific
Use clear, unambiguous commands describing the task you would like to achieve using natural language.
For example, instead of the simple prompt: "Find keywords about green spaces and wellbeing."
Try including more details, such as:
- “Suggest a variety of keywords related to student wellbeing and green spaces in higher education settings.”
Include any relevant context around the task to help the AI tool understand the background around your needs
Indicate purpose
Specify what you are using the information for so the AI tool can tailor its output to your goal or task.
Try including information that indicates purpose as included below:
- “Suggest keywords for an academic literature review on student mental health and access to nature.”
Stating the purpose helps the AI tool recommend content suited to one’s specific needs.
Define the output
Define exactly how you would like the AI tool to present its output. Some examples can include outputs in the form of a summary, a detailed list, or even a Boolean string.
Follow the approach used in the example prompt below which defines the format of the desired output:
- “Generate 3 Boolean search strings using the concepts: university students, green spaces, and mental health.”
Using this approach reduces ambiguity and ensures a more targeted AI output.
Review and refine
Continually review your AI output and decide whether you need to revise your prompt to better improve your results.
- Initial prompt: "Summarise this article."
- Refined prompt: "Summarise how campus green spaces have been shown to support university students’ mental health, using examples from recent peer-review studies."
Refining your prompt helps improve the response and assists in producing an output relevant to your research needs.