Nothing Beats a Jet2 Holiday - Except Great UX

We hear a lot about diversity - background, culture, life experience - and for good reason. But there's another kind that rarely gets airtime: cognitive diversity.

Not everyone thinks the same way. I'm not talking about opinions or taste - I mean the amount of complexity a person can comfortably hold in their head at once, the patterns they notice, the kind of problems they can solve.

Different minds excel at different things. Some thrive in the here-and-now, others in tightly defined procedures, others in deep technical specialisms, and a very rare few in connecting entire systems together.

To show you what I mean, let's take a quick trip through a cinematic universe - a world of package holidaymakers, airline pilots, finance chiefs, refinery engineers, jet engine innovators, and one all-seeing systems thinker who also happens to run a hedge fund.

Meet the "Nothing Beats a Jet2 Holiday" Person

They love holidays. They know exactly which package deal gives the best buffet, and they can spot a happy hour from 200 feet. The plane? That's just a flying bus to the beach. They have no idea how it works - and honestly, why would they care? What they do know is that the pilot must be the cleverest person onboard.

Meet the Pilot

Years of training, cool under pressure, master of navigation and cockpit systems. Everyone trusts them to get the passengers there safely. The holidaymaker sees the pilot as a genius. But the pilot? He's got nothing but respect for the CFO of the airline - the person who once engineered a complex merger that saved the pilot's job and improved working conditions.

Meet the CFO

Always top of the class, now running the numbers for a global airline. They've navigated major mergers, steered the company through economic turbulence, and made decisions worth hundreds of millions. Pilots think they're some kind of strategic wizard. But even the CFO remembers a conference years ago, where they met a man named Dave...

Meet Dave, the Chemical Engineer

Dave's a refinery legend. He knows every pipe, pump, and process that turns crude oil into jet fuel. He can draw the whole system from memory and explain it to a new hire in a way they'll never forget. The CFO was in awe - it's one thing to balance books, another to literally power the planes. But Dave will tell you he once met someone who made him feel like the holidaymaker on a Jet2 flight...

Meet the Jet Engine Innovator

Ten years in deep R&D at Rolls-Royce. Holds a patent for a turbine tweak that made the latest engine 2% more efficient - a change worth millions in fuel savings over its lifetime. They live and breathe metallurgy, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics. Few people on earth understand the inside of a jet engine the way they do.

Then, one morning over coffee, they read a long feature in the Financial Times about a hedge fund manager. This wasn't your standard finance type - he'd once designed an algorithm for air traffic routing, and was now brokering airline mergers across multiple continents. The article described him switching seamlessly between technical engineering detail and high-level corporate strategy, spotting opportunities that crossed disciplines most people never thought to connect.

The jet engine innovator put the paper down and thought: "He's not just playing the game - he's rewriting it."

Meet the Systems Thinker

They don't just know one part of aviation - they know all of it, and how it fits together. The chemistry of fuel. The metallurgy of turbine blades. The fluid dynamics of airflow at cruising altitude. The radar electronics that feed into air traffic control. The algorithms that schedule landings at busy airports. The economics of airline mergers and the geopolitics of international routes.

By the time they were 14, they'd already built mental models of jet engines, refinery processes, and real-time control systems - not because a teacher gave them homework, but because they were curious. They learned fluid dynamics the way other teenagers learn guitar chords, coding computer simulations for fun.

By their twenties, they could walk into:

• a metallurgy lecture,
• a CFO's boardroom,
• a jet engine design review,
• or a seminar on airline M&A history,

...and not only hold their own, but teach the experts in each room something new. They don't just know the details - they see the patterns and dependencies between them. For them, the "aviation industry" isn't a collection of departments; it's a single living system they can model, predict, and optimise in their head.

Same Plane, Different Minds

Even the Jet Engine Innovator - the person who reshaped efficiency in the skies - still flies on the same plane as the average Jet2 Holidaymaker. Same security line. Same boarding pass. Same check-in desk.

That's the beauty of cognitive diversity: everyone's brain works differently, but in the real world, we all end up using the same systems. And here's the kicker - those systems don't need to impress the Systems Thinker to be successful. They need to work for the holidaymaker.

And that's where the lesson for UX becomes clear.

Why the Jet2 Holidaymaker is Your UX MVP

In a world full of pilots, CFOs, engineers, innovators, and systems thinkers, the average holidaymaker is the single most important person in your product design process. Why? Because they represent the majority of your user base.

They're not there to marvel at your elegant logic or hidden features. They want to get from A to B with the least possible friction - just like they want to get from their front door to the beach without a hitch.

If they can book the ticket, check in, navigate the terminal, and board the plane without swearing at a kiosk, then you've nailed your UX. The same goes for banking app UX design.

If the average person can't understand your UX, it doesn't matter how much Dave the Chemical Engineer admires your work - you've already failed most of your users.

Design for the Jet2 Holidaymaker - everyone else is easy.