I’ve been speaking to many research professionals recently who are interested in checking out generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, but who are hesitant to do so because they don’t have a guide to help them through it. So, I’m here to help!
Since not everyone has time to watch my longer videos, I’m also creating a series of shorter ones that are focused on specific tasks. Here’s the second in the series:
Hey folks, Sean Jordan from the Research & Planning Group here. And I’m going to take a couple of minutes to show you how to use ChatGPT to take a complex topic and distill it down into something a novice could understand.
You can use this capability to explain something that you really want to understand, like quantum physics or an academic paper or the plot of a Christopher Nolan movie. But you can also use it to explain something that you have a complex understanding of to someone else.
I’m a professional marketing researcher, so people are always asking me to explain research methods we employ. One of the hardest to explain accurately is segmentation research, which we use to identify target market segments within a population. It’s very useful, but how it works requires a solid understanding of multivariate statistics, which I didn’t learn until graduate school. It’s also something that is often done very badly by non-researchers who love generating something called “brand personas” that may look like segmentation research at first blush, but which isn’t based in empirical data.
So, I’m going to use ChatGPT to write up an explanation of Segmentation Research for my client. Here’s the prompt I’ll use:
Please provide a helpful summary of segmentation research utilizing methods such as cluster analysis and factor analysis that explains the process used to create segments which can then be used to create consumer personas, and please use a helpful metaphor a marketing professional might understand.
And look at that output! It’s concise, it’s readable and it has an appropriate level of detail. I can either take this and use it as the basis for my own write-up, or I can copy and paste it into an email. Either way, and I do think this is important and ethical – credit ChatGPT for the explanation. It will make you look smarter since you know how to use the tool, and you can further explain that you reviewed it and made tweaks to ensure it’s accurate so you’ll sound like the true expert.
Let’s say, though, this is too much detail for your client, or you’re afraid they’ll only read a paragraph or two. We can ask ChatGPT to revise it further:
Please revise this helpful summary to make it more concise
Maybe some formatting would help too:
Can you create a table that shows each of those steps in tab form?
One plus of doing this: by organizing the data into a table, you can copy it into a program like Word or Powerpoint, apply some extra polish and make it look like you spent a lot more time on the task than you did while giving your client a cool document they can share with others who have the same question.
I hope you found this to be a useful tip! Please remember that my ethical guideline is to let people know if you’re using AI to author something, even if it’s just an explanation of a complex topic. Remember too, to be careful what you upload directly into ChatGPT and always disguise anything sensitive. If you enjoyed this, be sure to share it with someone else who can use it and also hit the like button, subscribe to my channel and leave a comment to share some of your fun tips for using ChatGPT!
See you next time!