I was a little intimidated asking ChatGPT to write its first line of code for me. I mean, after all, a computer probably knows programming better than I do, since it's been programmed its entire life. I've only been programmed since I got out of that cult.
So we started off with a softball question to help me gain my footing that has absolutely no bearing on the success or failure of a website - What color scheme should I consider for my online travel site?
Ever the optimist, ChatGPT fired away with a response and suggested a few different combinations. Luckily, none of them violated basic color theory. I already had in mind that I wanted to use blue as the primary color, but wondered if it would suggest a secondary (or even tertiary) member for the combination. It opted for white. Not the flashiest suggestion - and white is typically included as an accent anyway - but, sure, why not? Blue and white it is.
If I use blue for my travel site, list colors that accompany it well and describe where I should use them. Provide hex codes and the names of the colors as well.
It plugged along and gave me several blues to play with in addition to some accents. It did a good job of telling me where to employ them.
For example:
Gold (#FFD700): Add touches of gold for special elements like badges, awards, or premium offerings. Gold contrasts beautifully with blue and adds a touch of luxury or exclusivity to your site.
...and people say that Generative AI's art skills are execrable and only hasten the demise of creativity among the humanati. Roll over Picasso. Tell Da Vinci the news.
If you're curious, the primary color for the site is ChatGPT blue - Blue (#0074D9) or "mostly" blue when I query Google.
Next up - fonts. As you can guess, it provided a passable catalog of choices. However, I was a little taken aback when it referred to Montserrat and Roboto as "bold and eye-catching." In general, they're used more for readability than pizzazz (Chicago Bot Dog's main font is Roboto - have your eyes been screaming with pleasure the whole time?), but pizzazz is in the eye of the beholder.
It gives its usual disclaimer about its efforts at the end of the section in this particularly risk-averse statement:
Test different combinations to find the right balance between style and readability, and consider factors such as font size, spacing, and hierarchy to optimize the user experience.
I appreciate that the lawyers for all of the Generative AI providers are concerned about dispensing dubious or dangerous advice, but the Mystique of the LLM is shattered if it isn't "smart" enough to provide novel suggestions. Yes, I know I already spent an entire post ranting about its limitations, but I feel I need to balance the daily hype with my constant nagging about how AI isn't yet ready to sweep us off our feet.
Let's Write Some Code!
Now that we've got the aesthetics dead to rights and have every graphic designer quaking in their boots for fear of their jobs, let's go after the programmers.
Help me design a home page for my online leisure travel site.
Sure enough, I got a response with several bulleted sections (ChatGPT would make a great PowerPoint-churning executive somewhere. Put that bot in charge of a division!).
- Header
- Hero
- Featured Destinations/Deals
- Travel Inspiration
- About Us
- Contact
- Footer
Well, ok, that's a site design. I'm not sure that a header and a hero aren't the same thing - at least when featured destinations and travel inspiration are thrown into the mix as incentives for bold calls to action - but that's not the hill I'm going to die on here.
I do find it curious that featured destinations and travel inspiration are separate, but ChatGPT does explain itself. Featured destinations is a "grid of featured destinations or current deals with eye-catching images..." I don't think I'll ultimately go with a grid, as the page design may get a bit cluttered (a carousel seems to be a better choice), but Robbie the Robot and I were on the same wavelength here regarding the need for a deals section, so let's chalk that up as a win.
Travel inspiration, in contrast, suggests displaying a travel blog and user-generated content. On most of the sites I've contributed to, this content is available, but it's usually off the main path. It's an intriguing idea to put this content front and center, because Big Travel tends to sideline it as a niche, but it could be useful for building a name for a fledgling startup.
I strongly suspect that ChatGPT suggested this design because it equates a website with a small business marketing presence rather than the key automated engine that's driving your business. The fact that it has a contact form and no real travel-related search capability tends to reinforce my conclusions. As you'll see shortly in the website image below, it does include a search bar, but nothing that stands out to accommodate the functionality of "I want to book a trip from this date to this date in Pyongyang."
The simple search tool did give me enough pause to rethink my initial search strategy, though. Current travel sites use various forms of a search "bot" to allow a traveler to select options for flights, hotels, etc. But it's also possible to create a single search bar that prompts the user to simply type "May 1 - May 5 Pyongyang" or "Pyongyang Smog Festival" which will infer dates around said festival (Dear NSA, I have no particular interest in North Korea. I'm simply using Pyongyang for illustrative purposes because it's the first ridiculous travel location that came to mind).
A unified search bar would require some indexing of various phrases, and it's a place where even simple machine-learning concepts could assist in parsing the search, but it's not too much of a stretch to think it's a doable concept even in a one-person operation.
Since we're counting - that's two ideas that ChatGPT's given me that I didn't consider at first - using travel inspiration to differentiate the site and a universal search concept. Well, it didn't give me those ideas, I thought of them myself based on its naive input, but we'll put a tally mark in the automaton's column nonetheless for leading me to new conclusions.
Organizational Aside:
Incidentally, this is a rudimentary example that illustrates the need to hire a mix of junior and senior talent in your organization. Smart junior talent has a tendency to ask "why?" to all preconceived notions because they haven't been worn down by years of corporate propaganda. Smart senior talent should be able to answer those questions or realize that, if there's no good answer, the existing strategy should change. The mix helps to keep organizational perspectives fresh and reduces the risk of stagnation. I won't say there aren't any stupid questions - "Why don't we stop doing travel and switch to Bitcoin?" is one such example, but a request to determine the reasoning behind a decision is the farthest thing from stupid.
You'd think this would be obvious - and it is - but when the time comes to hire, people either veer towards the thought that losing any seniority will hobble the team or hiring senior employees will be too expensive and they'll be too inflexible to change. In reality, a skewed ratio in either direction tends to cause organizational headaches.
End Aside
Before we start optimizing our business plan or site design, we need to get something down on virtual paper to show the investors.
Provide html for the above design.
If you're interested in following along with my coding changes over the long haul, they're in
this GitHub repository I plan on referring to specific changes in posts when they're relevant and aren't too long to extract as code snippets. Otherwise, I'll provide links.
The initial commit that ChatGPT spits out for me is
here.
This is the result of that initial code. The only thing we're missing is a flashing under-construction banner and some dancing hamsters carry us back to the Era of Alternative Radio:
Looks like we've got a little bit more work to do before we launch.
Until next time my human and robot friends.
Comments
Post a Comment