Using AI to help automate my systems
Building a form to speed up the process.
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The problem
When starting this project my coding skills were somewhat limited. I was forced to take shortcuts in order to get the site up and running. I relied on third party solutions to help streamline my processes. One process in particular was the form for designers to fill out their information. I used Jotform to create and collect information about the designers. It wasn't pretty, but it did the job.
Not only did it lessen the perception of the site as users were sent a simple Jotform to fill out. I needed to manually input the information into the database once the information came in. This took a significant amount of time. This wasn't a scalable solution, I knew I needed to figure something out before it got out of hand.
The solution
I knew if I was going to keep the user within the site and have the process automated, I needed to build out the form myself. As mentioned earlier, my coding skills weren't the best and developing a form from scratch was going to be a challenge.
I had originally designed the form in Figma to help me understand what I wanted to build. I noticed there was a significant drop-off after sending users to the Jotform. Perhaps the form was overwhelmingly long or it left a poor impression. With that in mind, I needed to design the form based on my previous learnings.
With the help of ChatGPT I built the form to my liking. It wasn't perfect, but I definitely wouldn't have been able to build the form without it. Often at times I needed to go in and adjust the code, but I learned a lot from it and it saved me a lot of time.
From validation to progression steps, I understood what it took to build a form from scratch.
The outcome
Once a designer submits their story, I send them a link to the newly built form and I immediately get notified once a form has been submitted.
Not only does it keep them within the ecosystem, but it's also consistent with the overall brand. More importantly, the information inputted creates a new row to the database, saving me a tremendous amount of time. There are still a few rows that I need to manually create, but if I want to maintain a level of quality on the site, I don't mind doing it myself.
Designers have used the form to submit their story and it's cool to see the systems work. I plan to iterate on the form and refine my processes to make it fully automated. I learned a lot about what it takes to build a form and I couldn't have done it without the help of AI. I will be using ChatGPT more often as it'll save me a lot of time and help me scale faster.