What to Say to an AI Kitchen Designer

Start with these and you will rarely need anything else

Between them they cover the great majority of what anybody actually needs while designing. None of them requires you to know a single piece of cabinet vocabulary. All five need her to read your design, so ask them where she can: typed, in the panel you get by right-clicking Ask Emma (free), or out loud on a Do it for me call. A Just talk call cannot see your screen.

• What should I do next?The one that does the most work. It runs the planner’s own step logic over your real layout and comes back with one concrete recommendation — or with the one question it needs answered first. Those questions (where the sink, range and fridge go, which corner cabinet) are answered with the mouse on the AI Suggestion panel, in 3D with Edit 3D on, so settle them first.
• Why can’t I move this?The everyday one. The answer is nearly always in the current state: a tool still switched on, nothing selected, an item lifted off the floor, something overlapping.
• What is this?Select something first, then ask. You get the name, the size and what it is for — which is how the vocabulary gets learned.
• What did I just do?For the moment when something changed and you are not sure what you touched. She can see your recent edits and the last message the app showed you.
• Is there enough room here?She can give you the clearance rule and check the selected item against its wall, but she cannot measure the aisle between your island and the run — the Measure tool does that. Ask before you commit to the layout, not after.

Point with the mouse, not with the words

“That one over there, next to the tall thing” is how humans point, and it is the single most common way these conversations go wrong. She reads your design as a written summary, and the summary knows exactly one thing about your attention: what is currently selected.

So click the cabinet, then ask. It takes half a second and it removes the entire category of misunderstanding.

Walls are the exception — they are numbered in the design and she can see the numbers, so “wall two” is always unambiguous even with nothing selected.

Describe the problem, not the solution

The instinct is to translate your problem into what you imagine the software calls it, and then ask for that. It is a wasted step, and it usually translates wrong.

• Instead of “add a 3-inch filler on the left return” — say “there’s a gap at the wall here, what do I do about it?”
• Instead of “set the toe kick height” — say “why is there a gap under this cabinet?”
• Instead of “change the base cabinet SKU” — say “I need drawers here instead of a door”

You get a better answer and you get told what the thing is called, which is the part you actually needed.

Say numbers the way you would to a builder

Speech recognition is very good at numbers and very bad at guessing which unit you meant. Cabinet dimensions in North America are inches, and everything in the planner is inches underneath.

• Say the unit — “thirty-six inches”, not “thirty-six”. “Eight feet”, not “eight”
• Fractions out loud are fine — “thirty-six and a half inches” is understood; so is “a hundred and two”
• Metric is fine too — say “two point four metres” and it converts. What causes trouble is mixing units inside one sentence
• Type anything critical — a wall length you measured is worth typing into the box rather than trusting to a microphone in a room with a radio on

The rule that matters Numbers you measured go in by hand. Voice is for questions; the tape measure’s numbers deserve a keyboard.

Interrupt, correct, and be short

She is built to answer in one or two sentences and to stay quiet while you work. Treat it as a working call rather than an interview and it stops feeling like software:

• Just say “no, the other side” — corrections work mid-conversation; you do not need to restate the whole question
• “Shorter” and “slow down” work — and so does “stop”
• She will not chatter — no check-ins, no asking how it is going. But fifteen quiet seconds end the call (on a Do it for me call, at the next whole minute), so when you have the next question, click Ask Emma to call back
• Only a Do it for me call changes your design — a Just talk call cannot touch it. On a Do it for me call she changes only what that sentence asked for, one item at a time, and a recommended cabinet goes in only after your “yes, do it”. Every change is one step of undo

Empty room to a wall of cabinets, out loud

This is the shape of a real first session, on a Do it for me call — the kind where she can place things. Notice how little of it is about the software and how much is just asking a question and getting on with it.

Four minutes in, and you have learned what a blind corner base is by being told it in front of the corner you needed it for. That is the whole argument for voice.

Questions worth not asking

• “How big is my kitchen?”She can read the walls you drew, so she knows the drawing perfectly — and knows nothing about the room. If the drawing is wrong, every answer inherits it.InsteadMeasure the real room first. Chapter 01 is twenty minutes with a tape.
• “Does this look nice?”She reads a written description of your design, not the picture. She has opinions about layout and none about how the light falls on your door colour.InsteadGenerate a render and look at it yourself, or show it to somebody who will be honest.
• “Just design the whole thing.”Voice places one recommended step at a time, on purpose — a conversation is a bad interface for twenty simultaneous decisions.InsteadRun AI Design, the automatic layout generator in the right sidebar, then talk through the result cabinet by cabinet.
• “Order these for me.”Nothing is ordered by voice, deliberately. Quoting and ordering stay on screen where you can read every line.InsteadFinish the design, then open the quote and read it.