CRISP and CLEAR

CRISP is focused on providing a checklist of elements that make up a good single prompt. It doesn’t address the need to review and reflect on the output and how to develop a prompt through a conversation.

Click on each letter below to reveal the meaning of CRISP.

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Context – give a range of background information. Role – what role should the AI assume? Intent – what is the purpose of the prompt? Specifics – provide detailed instructions on the t, including the information needed. Product – describe the output you want.

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Let’s consider the second prompt for the poem. Does it contain all of the elements suggested by CRISP?

 

“Write a poem about speed, it should make references to train journeys, car races and galloping horses and other similar fast events and objects. The audience for the poem will be 10–14-year-olds, English speakers, living in a big city. The poem should contain four verses and have a strong rhythm.”

 

Hmm, we could do better by the CRISP guidance – we haven’t explicitly set the role for the AI. Implicitly it’s that of a poet (we’re asking it to write a poem after all), but could it be explicitly stated with a more focused description of the role? We also haven’t specified the intent of the prompt – I think we assumed it was simply to get an entertaining poem, but we could have said more – for example, that the 10–14-year-olds are learning about rhythm and rhyme if that was the context for the request.

CRISP doesn’t have the audience specifically as a focus. When considering ‘intent’ it is therefore important to say what the intended audience for the output is, so that the level of language and style used can be adapted. In many other frameworks, audience is raised as a key element to specify in a prompt.

Activity icon Improve the prompt to make it better

Timing: Allow 5 minutes

Look back at the prompt you created in the previous section. Did you include all of the elements of CRISP? If you omitted any, how could you improve the prompt to make it better?

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Discussion

Your answer will depend on how explicit your original prompt was. Using a framework such as CRISP will help to ensure you include all relevant information to give the GenAI tool the best possible opportunity to create a relevant answer.

Comparing the two frameworks, CRISP includes a checklist of issues to include in an individual prompt.

By contrast CLEAR focuses on the overall style and approach to prompting. It’s not so much a checklist of elements, but a reminder of the approach to take when structuring and delivering prompts, and the importance of reflecting on the outputs then adapting and refining the prompts.

Click on each letter below to reveal the meaning of CLEAR.

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Concise – keep it clear and simple, remove anything superfluous to the task or language expressing it. Logical – make sure the prompt is written in a logical sequence and, for example, doesn’t jump around from task to audience to output repeatedly. Explicit – be explicit about how to present the output – style, tone, features to include or exclude. Adaptive – try different prompts to see what effect they have on the output delivered, adjust prompts if you don’t get what you want first time. Reflection – evaluate all aspects of the response the AI gives. Check relevance and accuracy of the information contained in the response.

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CLEAR and CRISP would make a good combination of frameworks to consider, with CRISP reminding you what elements prompts need, and CLEAR reminding you how to style and present prompts along with the need for review and refinement. Also, CRISP CLEAR PROMPTs is easily remembered 😊.

Session 2: Single prompts, conversational prompts and personas – 90 minutes

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