Super Designer: What can AI do in 30 minutes?
AI isn’t just about exponential speed. It’s a multiplier that sharpens your thinking and actions.
Hey, since I’ve been trying to wrap my head around AI, one of the figures I’ve been following is Professor Ethan Mollick. He did this exploration called “What can AI do in 30 minutes?1” and I’m keen to explore that as a designer.
In 30 minutes, it helped me explore a design challenge:
Reflect on what I know and what I don’t know
Look for simple, fast, low-effort tests
Explore how I can shape my design process
Explore what I need to learn from people
Take a look…
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Context:
I’m working on a grief support app that offers a self-guided course, practical tools, live community support, and other resources to help people process their grief. Our team has a hypothesis that using a survey can help us build a sense of connection by showing users we understand their situation, needs, and emotions before offering any kind of support.
I used:
ChatGPT
First…
I added my design challenge context into the prompt, then continued with the other prompts one by one.
🤖 Prompt:
Help me explore a design challenge. I’ll prompt each question one by one.
[Brief or product requirement documents.]
#1 Reflect on what I know and what I don’t know
To make sense of a design challenge, I always start by reflecting on what I know and what I don’t, inspired by the known knowns matrix, to check my current footing.
I tested AI to help me generate a set of questions I could answer right away.
🤖 Prompt:
Please give me a set of reflective questions to help surface what I know (the current context), what I don’t know (areas I could explore or research further), and what might be hidden (things I’m not yet aware of or haven’t considered) about the design challenge.
The result was that I felt a bit bombarded with too many questions at once.
Tip: Add ‘ask me the questions one by one’ to the prompt.
Then I gave it another go, fed in my answers, and iterated from there.
🤖 Prompt:
Is there anything you’d like to ask me based on my answers?
Last, I compiled all my answers into AI so we have a shared context.
#2 Look for simple, fast, low-effort tests
When you’re creating something new, there’s a lot of uncertainty, and you don’t have much insight yet. Every bet becomes riskier. Instead of going all-in on assumptions, it’s often quicker (and more useful) to run small tests. A simple experiment can show you what resonates before you build anything complex.
I prompted ChatGPT to help me brainstorm simple experiments I could run.
🤖 Prompt:
Help me break down a few assumptions and find low-effort ways to test them without getting too technical.Here’s what I need:
List the underlying assumptions
Suggest simple ways to test them using what we already have, like existing data, surveys, interviews, or content experiments
Keep it fast, practical, and easy to execute
The tricky part of this prompt is that ChatGPT doesn’t know the full context of your product. When I ran it the first time, the output didn’t feel very useful.
But once I mentioned that our product already has onboarding with questions similar to a survey, it started giving me more interesting and relevant ideas to test.
Tip: If ChatGPT’s answer isn’t helpful, add more context and try again!
#3 Explore how I can shape my design process
Early in the process, I usually take a step back and think about the process itself — designing the design work (a meta perspective). So I thought it’d be interesting to brainstorm how I could approach this challenge in a better, more intentional way.
🤖 Prompt:
Help me shape my design process.
What’s the best way to approach this design challenge, considering my goals, constraints, and users? Are there alternative methods, mindsets, or workflows I should explore to help me design more effectively?
Tip:
Add extra context about your resource constraints, like team and time.
Shape the process with intention, ask: Why should I do this? So what if I do this?
#4 Explore what I need to learn from people
There are things your users know that you don’t, things you can only uncover by listening closely, observing carefully, and asking the right questions.
To be more intentional with my research, I had to clarify what answers I was actually looking for.
🤖 Prompt:
Help me explore what I need to learn from people.
What can I learn from users? What insights can only be uncovered through close observation, deep listening, or more intentional questioning?
The result was interesting to me, since AI doesn’t know what insights I already have about our users, everything it suggested came from a neutral place. That made it useful as a cross-check. I could compare its suggestions with the insights my team has already gathered and see if there were gaps we hadn’t noticed yet.
Tip:
Again, intention. Ask: Why do I need to know this? So what if I know this?
Share the insights you have and go deeper. Ask: What am I not seeing yet? What might be influencing this that I haven't considered? What patterns are starting to emerge?
Honestly, it wasn’t exactly a 30-minute exploration, but AI still helped me unblock my thinking quickly.
During the early stages, it can be especially helpful when you’re feeling overwhelmed by a flood of information. I found thoughtful questions are useful to consider and helped me slow down and reflect.
Although it’s great for brainstorming and bouncing around ideas, you’re still in the driver’s seat. Curate the information that matters. Keep your critical thinking lenses on, be careful of confirmation bias!
I see the value as more than just exponential speed.
It’s a multiplier that helps you think more intelligently and act more tactically.
If you want to replicate what I did here, just little notes:
This isn’t a step-by-step recipe. Each step is a modular piece you can use as needed.
These aren’t rigid prompts. You likely have a different level of information, so feel free to adjust and iterate them based on your context.
The goal isn’t to rush to a design output. It’s to help you think, process information, and explore a design challenge or idea.
I’ll be sharing the second part of this exploration next — another 30 minutes spent diving deeper into the craft. Stay tuned!
Until next time,
Design Buddy
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