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June 2, 2025

You’re Too Close to It. ChatGPT as a Sanity Check for Designers Without a Team

What if your second set of eyes wasn’t a person, but a prompt?

After hours fine-tuning type scale, nudging layouts, and juggling overlapping constraints, you’re often the worst person to judge your own work. Your eye adapts. You stop seeing what’s actually there.

That’s where ChatGPT fits into my process. Not for content. Not for ideas. For feedback. It helps me catch the inconsistencies I’ve trained myself to ignore. Quietly, without ego, and on demand.

Here’s how I use it.

🎯 Objective Design Feedback

After a long sprint, your judgment gets cloudy. You’ve been solving edge cases, aligning with brand, and responding to shifting product requirements. Eventually, you lose the ability to see things fresh.

ChatGPT helps reset that perspective.

Example:
I was reviewing a complex checkout flow. Everything felt solid, but ChatGPT flagged that the “Apply Promo Code” field had a different input height and label spacing than the rest of the form. The pattern technically worked, but the deviation was unintentional. Fixing it made the whole flow feel tighter and more intentional.

🧩 Catching Small Inconsistencies

As projects grow with more pages, contributors, and moving parts, visual drift becomes harder to catch. Even when your foundation is solid, the small stuff can get lost.

I use ChatGPT to review things like:

  • Layouts that almost follow the system but not quite
  • Subtle inconsistencies between breakpoints
  • Icon or illustration usage that slightly shifts tone
  • Type scale or vertical rhythm that starts to drift over time

Example:
I uploaded five content modules from a marketing site and asked ChatGPT to check them for consistency. It pointed out that the spacing between headline and body text varied slightly between modules. It didn’t break anything, but it disrupted the rhythm. Once fixed, the flow felt intentional again.

⚡️ Faster Design Reviews

Sometimes you just need someone to say, “This piece doesn’t quite match the rest.” ChatGPT gives me that feedback instantly. I use it for a first-pass review before sending designs to:

  • PMs who care about clarity
  • Engineers prepping for handoff
  • Brand teams checking cohesion

It lets me move fast without cutting corners.

🤝 Smoother Collaboration

Making the right design call is one thing. Explaining it to someone who doesn’t speak design is another.

Example:
I wanted to remove a subhead from a hero section to improve focus. ChatGPT helped me phrase the reasoning like this: “The subhead adds visual noise and splits attention from the primary call to action. Removing it allows the CTA to lead more clearly.” That’s exactly what I meant. It just phrased it better.

🧠 Getting Unstuck Creatively

Sometimes you know something isn’t working, but you can’t explain why. That’s where a bit of distance helps.

Example:
I was working on a hero section with a solid grid, strong typography, and a good image. But it still felt cluttered. I asked ChatGPT to critique it. It pointed out that the hierarchy was competing with too many elements. I had two CTAs, a carousel, and a headline all sitting above the fold. I removed the carousel, and the layout immediately felt more confident and focused.

📌 Know the Limits

ChatGPT isn’t a creative director. It won’t tell you your layout feels emotionally flat or your typography is slightly off-brand. And it doesn’t always know when you’ve broken a rule on purpose.

I’ve seen it miss weak contrast that technically passed WCAG, or assume design decisions were intentional when they weren’t. That’s why I use it as a second set of eyes, not a final decision-maker.

👩‍🎓 For Junior Designers: A Shortcut to Looking Sharp

If you’re early in your career, ChatGPT can help you show up like someone ready for more responsibility. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about sending work that feels thoughtful and polished before your lead even sees it.

It helps you:

  • Catch issues before they become feedback
  • Explain your design choices more clearly
  • Ask better, more focused questions in review

There’s nothing more confidence-building than receiving a file that needs barely any notes.

💬 Prompts I Keep Coming Back To

ChatGPT isn’t useful unless you ask the right questions. These are a few I rely on regularly:

  • “Act as a senior designer. Review this layout for visual inconsistencies.”
  • “Do these two components follow the same design rules?”
  • “What would you revise to improve balance and cohesion?”
  • “Does anything in this flow feel distracting, off-pattern, or inconsistent?”

The better the prompt, the better the insight.

🧾 Key Takeaways

  • Even experienced designers lose perspective
  • ChatGPT helps you see the details your brain has stopped noticing
  • It’s useful for solo work, tight timelines, or juniors trying to earn trust
  • Not perfect, but incredibly practical when used with intention