Last year, between Christmas and New Year’s, I built my first real app, which turned photos from museums into kid-friendly audio stories.

No roadmap. No permission. Just one problem I couldn’t stop thinking about and a little bit of quiet time.

Since then, I’ve learned how to use AI to augment nearly every part of my personal and professional workflow. It’s reshaped how I work, and I’ve helped 1,000+ people learn how to do the same through hands-on trainings and workshops with Build First.

Now it’s your turn.

If you’ve been telling yourself “I should build something with AI” but (still) not doing it, I made something to help you start. You can try it out at buildfirst.app.

POP-IT is a design framework to help you build apps with AI by guiding you through the following workflow:

• Problem: What is the problem you are trying to solve?

• Output: What do you want to see from the AI when you’re done?

• Prompt: What instructions does the AI need to accomplish the task?

• Input: What context or documentation can you share with the AI?

• Test: How will you know it’s working?

Whether you’re starting off by building your first custom chatbot with ChatGPT or Gemini, or off to the races with AI no-code tools like Replit, Lovable, or Claude Code, POP-IT offers a way to help you structure your problems into real prompts to get you started.

So, if you’ve got a little space this holiday season, build something small. Start messy. See what happens. You never know where it might lead…

Happy building!

The POP-IT framework was developed in partnership with Decoded Futures in 2024.

Last year, between Christmas and New Year’s, I built my first real app, which turned photos from museums into kid-friendly audio stories.

No roadmap. No permission. Just one problem I couldn’t stop thinking about and a little bit of quiet time.

Since then, I’ve learned how to use AI to augment nearly every part of my personal and professional workflow. It’s reshaped how I work, and I’ve helped 1,000+ people learn how to do the same through hands-on trainings and workshops with Build First.

Now it’s your turn.

If you’ve been telling yourself “I should build something with AI” but (still) not doing it, I made something to help you start. You can try it out at buildfirst.app.

POP-IT is a design framework to help you build apps with AI by guiding you through the following workflow:

• Problem: What is the problem you are trying to solve?

• Output: What do you want to see from the AI when you’re done?

• Prompt: What instructions does the AI need to accomplish the task?

• Input: What context or documentation can you share with the AI?

• Test: How will you know it’s working?

Whether you’re starting off by building your first custom chatbot with ChatGPT or Gemini, or off to the races with AI no-code tools like Replit, Lovable, or Claude Code, POP-IT offers a way to help you structure your problems into real prompts to get you started.

So, if you’ve got a little space this holiday season, build something small. Start messy. See what happens. You never know where it might lead…

Happy building!

The POP-IT framework was developed in partnership with Decoded Futures in 2024.