📨 Subscribe | 🤖 AI Training | 🚀 Courses

Today’s Thoughts ☠️

Hey there 👋,

I don’t know how we got back here so soon.

It’s like the keyboard never left my fingertips from last week’s edition. That strange feeling aside, I’m back with a step by step tutorial to try out.

Today, we’re exploring how to transform your ideas from scribbles on a page to working prototypes in 10 minutes with AI.

Get your tea or beverage of choice ready, 🍵.

We've got lots to discuss!

→ Much love to today’s sponsor, You Can Now ❤️

👀 In today’s chat:

• From ideas to reality: Bring your L&D tools to life for stakeholders
  

• Why ‘find your passion’ is bad career advice

• 3 ways AI assistants can be meaningfully used to support L&D and HR teams

THE BIG THOUGHT
How To Turn Your Ideas Into Working Prototypes With AI

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:

1. Visit Claude’s website and sign-up for a free account
   

2. Access your profile on the left-hand side of the screen at the bottom with your email/username
   

3. 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 this 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).

📝 Final Thoughts

So again (yes I’m a stuck record), my whole message is always, how do we look beyond content creation with AI tools? 

We must reshape mindsets and behaviours with how these tools work.

Content creation alone is a poor use that gives no advantage to anyone.

I hope that's helpful.

Fire any questions my way, and let me know your biggest takeaway from today’s chat in the comments.

Till next time, you stay classy learning friend!

PS… If you’re enjoying the newsletter, will you take 4 seconds to forward this edition to a friend? It goes a long way in helping me grow the newsletter (and cut through our industry BS with actionable insights).

And one more thing, I’d love your input on how to make the newsletter even more useful for you!

So please leave a comment with:

1. Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

2. Your biggest takeaway from this edition

I read & reply to every single one of them!

SMART THOUGHTS

🤔  Why ‘Find Your Passion’ is bad career advice

This will be controversial.

But I suppose when has anything not been controversial with my words 😂

Despite being a learning tech nerd, and sharing my insights on this topic with you, I have spent nearly 20 years crafting a career. In this time, I’ve worked with lots of company’s and I notice one crippling pattern among them all with career development.

💡 3 impactful ways to use AI assistants in L&D and HR

AI is cool only if it meaningfully enhances work.

You don’t need 5 billion tools or prompts. Here’s my take on 3 impactful ways you can deploy AI assistants in our industry. These are low-level and ripe for small experimentations.

🔥  How to become unstuck in your career

Fact: Growth happens in times of strife and adversity.

That doesn’t sound appealing, but I don’t make the rules. Despite what social media tells you, the ‘overnight success story’ doesn’t exist, and the only way though is with a little discomfort.

So, what it will be? Keep doing the same cycle of madness or try something new?

How I can help you

1. My L&D toolkit stack + AI For L&D Lab with 50 zero-cost tools.
   
   

2. The AI For L&D Crash Course: Build your confidence and skills with AI tools in L&D. Packed with practical use cases and step by step tutorials. Trusted by 300 + L&D pros.
   
   

3. Join The Cult of Thoughts ☠️: A backstage pass to exclusive industry deep dives, events and a monthly newsletter for L&D rebels.
   
   

4. Stalk me on LinkedIn for daily insights, tools and frameworks.

Want to reach over 3,000 L&D pros?

Learn how you can sponsor the newsletter