How to prompt

A Guide to Working with Your AI Research Assistant

Introduction

To get the most out of Beings, one skill matters above all: strategic prompting.

Whether you’re working with Aida—your default Beings assistant—or training a custom research agent of your own, the principle is the same: clear prompts lead to better insights, faster.

Beings assistants are built to accelerate your qualitative workflow while preserving depth, nuance, and human judgment. But just like any teammate, they need clear direction.

Think of Your Assistant as a Research Teammate

Aida—and any future agent you train—is like a brilliant junior researcher: fast, methodical, and deeply trained in qualitative methods.

What they need is your brief: context, clarity, and intent.

The 4 C’s of Strategic Prompting

Use this framework to consistently generate high-quality, structured responses.

1. Context – Set the Scene

🗯️ Instead of: “Summarise this.”

✅ Try: “This is an interview with a long-term healthcare plan member. We want to uncover what drives their loyalty and any recurring frustrations.”

2. Clarity – Be Specific

🗯️ Instead of: “What are the main themes?”

✅ Try: “List the top five frustrations related to the service process, focusing on communication, claims, and approvals.”

3. Constraint – Guide the Output

🗯️ Instead of: “Highlight quotes.”

✅ Try: “Extract three quotes about ‘brand loyalty vs. Bupa’ and format them in a table with ‘Quote’ and ‘Participant ID’ columns.”

4. Converse – Keep the Dialogue Going

🗯️ Initial prompt: “What frustrations are mentioned?”

✅ Follow-up: “Can you dig into the issue around pre-approvals? What caused that frustration according to the participant?”

Applying the 4 C’s in Practice

Thematic Analysis Across Interviews

Prompt:

[Context] “I’m analysing 28 interviews with healthcare plan members.”
[Clarity] “Identify the top 5 recurring pain points and moments of delight.”
[Constraint] “Include three anonymised quotes for each.”

📝 Reviewing a Discussion Guide

Prompt:

[Context] “Act as a research methodologist reviewing this guide.”
[Clarity] “Identify any leading or unclear questions.”
[Constraint] “Explain the issue and rewrite each in more neutral terms.”

What Beings Assistants Can Help You With

✅ Code transcripts
✅ Extract themes
✅ Summarise messaging
✅ Refine discussion guides
✅ Pressure-test hypotheses
✅ Save hours of manual work

Looking Ahead

Today you’re working with Aida, Beings’ default assistant.
Tomorrow, you’ll be training a custom agent—one that reflects how you think, analyse, and work.

Start with Aida.

Grow your own research agent.