It took me a few attempts, but I have gotten this to work fairly well. I started with explaining my ideal app like this: We're going to design a (language) app

It took me a few attempts, but I have gotten this to work fairly well. I started with explaining my ideal app like this: We're going to design a (language) application that performs the following tasks, delineated by semi-colons: Then I listed about a dozen high-level user stories, separated by semi-colons, and ended the list with a period. Then I clarified my instructions like this: We will design each step together, where you ask me for any specifications needed to complete the step and I respond with those specfications. When you feel we have completed designing a step, ask me if I have any questions before proceeding to the next step. It started with a high-level recap of my user stories, asked if I was ready to proceed, and then began to describe the first step. Over about two hours of back-and-forth, I ended up with a 20-page document of high-level architecture interspersed with code samples, db schema samples, and answers to questions that popped up during the "discussion." And I got about halfway to a working prototype during those two hours. BLEW me away how well it worked.