Hey everyone! I’m currently in my 2nd year of engineering at DSCE, pursuing Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, and I wanted to share something I recently completed that genuinely boosted my understanding of AI.

A few days ago, I finished the “Prompt Design in Vertex AI” course on Google Cloud Skill Boost—and honestly, it opened my eyes to how powerful and creative prompt engineering can be. If you’ve ever wondered how tools like ChatGPT, Bard, or Gemini generate such intelligent responses, this course basically teaches you how to talk to those models effectively and get the best out of them.

So, This is What Exactly Is Prompt Design All about?

Before this course, I used to think that AI just magically knew what to do. But I’ve realized that how you ask something matters a lot. Prompt design is all about giving clear, smart instructions to a language model so it can give meaningful answers.

The course walked through different techniques:

Zero-shot prompting (just asking the model straight)
Few-shot prompting (giving a few examples to guide it)
Chain-of-thought prompting (letting the model “think out loud”)

These sound technical, but once I saw real examples and tried them in the Vertex AI Generative AI Studio, it started to make total sense.

Hands-On With Vertex AI and Google’s PaLM Model

One of the best parts of the course was getting to work directly with Google’s PaLM model using Vertex AI Studio. It’s like a playground for testing prompts, playing with output styles, and tweaking how the model responds.

I got to experiment with:

Summarizing long content
Extracting data from messy input
Generating creative text like emails, reviews, or product descriptions

It was fun to see how small changes in the prompt could totally change the answer. It felt like having a super-intelligent assistant who does exactly what you ask—but only if you ask the right way.

As a Robotics & AI Student, This Hit Differently

Since I’m working towards a future in robotics and intelligent systems, this course gave me more than just theory. It helped me imagine:

Robots that can understand everyday instructions better
Smart assistants that adapt to tone, context, and even emotion
Ways to make human-AI communication more natural and efficient

I could literally see how prompt design could be integrated into the kind of projects we build in college—like AI chatbots, robotic command systems, or even smart home automation.

Takeaways That Will Stick With Me

Here’s what I’m taking forward from this course:

AI is only as good as the prompt it’s given.
There’s an art to designing prompts—it’s not just technical, it’s creative.
Ethical and responsible use of AI is crucial, especially when it comes to bias or misinformation.

-> Final Thoughts

I can honestly say this was one of the most practical and eye-opening courses I’ve taken online so far. It’s short, free, and directly useful for anyone working with AI, whether you’re a student or a developer.

To my fellow engineering students—especially those in AI, data science, or robotics—I highly recommend checking it out on Google Cloud Skill Boost. You’ll walk away with actual skills you can apply in your projects, resumes, and internships.

This was just my first step into the world of prompt engineering, but I’m super excited for what comes next.