Art by Midjourney

Last week, I learned that Jakob Nielsen, the guru of Web Page Usability and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman group, talked about how AI is the future of UX.

Now that ChatGPT has been around for almost a year, I expected many larger organizations to have an opinion. However, I wasn’t expecting how supportive he was: he predicted a shortage of UX Professionals with two years' of AI usability experience in 2025, with each professional receiving 500 job offers.

At the same time, there's quite a lot of noise around learning AI-based tools. Nestled between get-rich-quick schemes and academic theses on AI are very few resources for non-technical people. As a result, many Junior Designers may not know how to learn this skill.

However, based on my experience in Data-Informed Design and AI, the answer is more straightforward than you think. To learn AI-driven tools, you must first adopt a new mental model centered around four words: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Having the right mental model for AI is crucial

I've spent most of my UX career working in fields where data is king. From Healthcare and Federal UX to B2B/SaaS products, I've had to adapt design practices to incorporate Analytics, Metrics, and even AI-informed insights into my process.

This is why I'll tell you that the first place that Designers should start is with the mental model they should use around AI and data. To do that, I'll provide you with four words that have governed Computer Science (and related fields) for almost 80 years: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

In other words, if the quality of your input, data, or AI prompt is garbage, your output will be as well.

I first came across this phrase when I started learning Data Visualization, where it was of crucial importance. After all, it didn't matter if I designed the world's best data visualization: if that visualization was based on garbage data, it was a garbage visualization.