“Vu jadé is when you’re in a place you’ve been a million times before like the lobby of your own building, the front page of your own website, and you start to see it with fresh eyes. You see it the way a child would see it or the way a first time customer would see it” — Tom Kelley, IDEO
Leading on from his discussion on the beginner’s mind in design on the High Resolution podcast, Tom Kelley let us in on a neat inversion that they use at IDEO to build the muscle of objectivity and approaching user research without an agenda.
He advised that anyone involved in the design process try to build the skill of vu jadé by practicing it on other people’s businesses. Starting to train this muscle on your own business is far more difficult because of your inevitable emotional investment, especially if you are a founder of the business. With someone else’s business, you are already an outsider, so are approaching the product/service in a similar way to a new user. Once you have built up experience of approaching user research and design analysis in this way, you will grow familiar with the beginner’s mind, making it far easier to run your own user centred design process.
How I built vu jadé
Despite only coming across Tom’s insight a couple of days ago, I have actually been training my vu jadé for quite some time. Having worked in sales and new user on boarding for three years within the fintech and financial intelligence industry, I have spoken to hundreds of new users, understanding their concerns and observing the patterns which arise when someone comes into contact with an interface or product for the first time. Whilst no two users are the same, there are certain tendencies and needs that each need to be fulfilled.
Build your own vu jadé
However, you don’t need access to hundreds of users to develop this skillset. It can be as easy as taking notes on the user experiences that you interact with as a customer every day. As you’re waiting in the queue at a coffee shop, think back to how you were welcomed into the shop, how the people around you are navigating the menu or the queuing system, is anyone confused?
Earlier on in his interview with High Resolution, Tom explains that he thinks “it’s really helpful to think of [design] as a mindset, as opposed to a thing”. It’s the mindset of the tinkerer, of the curious and always looking for ways to make something better, striving for more.
Everyone has a place in the design process, but it’s our job as designers to ask the right questions, even if everyone else thinks that they’re stupid questions. The answers may be obvious to we who work on this product day in and day out, but they may be recurring questions for new users, who aren’t stupid, we just aren’t using our vu jadé.