Describe the Feel
Turns "make it feel premium" into properties with numbers you can check when it comes back.
When to reach for it
When the only honest description you have is emotional — premium, calmer, more playful, less corporate — and you want the result judged against something firmer than whether you like it.
What changes
- Each feel word becomes 3–5 named properties with values — type scale, spacing step, animation duration, border treatment — instead of staying a mood.
- You get an explicit list of what the feel rules out, so the agent knows which obvious moves are wrong before it makes them.
- Disagreement about what the word meant surfaces in the translation table, not after a screen has been built.
- The review afterwards has a checklist: every property either matches the agreed value or is a defect with a location.
Pairs with
- Reference, Not RecreatePoints at how another product behaves precisely enough to build from, without asking for a clone.
- Structure Before StyleDecides the shape of the screen before any colour is picked, because being recognisable on sight is the failure — not any one ingredient.
- Assumption CheckMakes the agent state what it is assuming — and verify it — before it writes a line.
Describe the Feel
The request contains a feel word — premium, calm, playful, serious, friendly, dense — and no properties. Convert it before building.
1. Quote the feel words back
List them verbatim, in the user's words. Do not paraphrase into design jargon yet: "feels cheap" and "feels cluttered" are different problems and the substitution loses which one was said.
2. Translate each word into observable properties
For each feel word, propose 3–5 properties with actual values. Draw from these dimensions and pick only the ones that carry the feel:
- Space — the step scale, and the ratio between grouped and ungrouped gaps
- Type — how many sizes, the weight range, line height, tracking
- Color — how many distinct values, saturation range, contrast
- Edge — corner radius, border weight, shadow depth or its absence
- Motion — duration range, easing, what animates and what does not
- Density — items per screen, whitespace share
- Copy — sentence length, formality, whether it uses exclamation
"Premium" usually means: fewer colors, one accent, generous space between groups and tight space within them, no gradients, shadows replaced by hairline borders, motion under 200ms, type limited to three sizes. Say the version you mean, with numbers.
3. Say what the feel rules out
Every feel word forbids things. Write 3–5 of them. "Premium rules out gradient fills, drop shadows on cards, more than one accent colour, bouncy easing, and emoji." This half is what actually prevents the wrong output.
4. Confirm before building
Show the translation as a short table: feel word, properties, what it rules out. Ask whether it is right. Two lines of correction here is cheaper than a rebuild.
5. Build against the confirmed list, then check it
After building, walk the list and report each property as matching the agreed value or not, with a file and line.
Rules
- Do not restate the feel word as a plan. "I will make it feel premium" commits to nothing and can be neither checked nor argued with.
- Do not offer a menu of style names — minimal, brutalist, glassmorphic. It replaces one vague word with a different vague word.
- Do not produce more than about a dozen properties in total. A list with thirty knobs is a mood board, not a specification.
- Do not treat the translation as permission to redesign anything the feel word did not touch.
- If two feel words conflict — "playful but serious" — name the conflict and ask which one wins where, rather than averaging them.