Using Jobs to be done to design, build, and market products
Nov 27, 2022 . 6 min read . 625 views
Jobs to be done is a framework developed by Clayton Christensen. It helps us think about products & services from a more functional lens vs a feature lens.
e.g, The need for going from one place to another has always been there but over time it has been fulfilled by different products(horse carts, bikes, cars, ships).
As per Christensen, your product should solve a real customer need and your solution should be 10X better compared to the competition for you to be able to build a business around your product.
In this post, we will see how you can use the JTBD framework to build better products, impactful marketing reach outs and delightful user experiences.
Part 1: Using JTBD to build better products
A customer’s Jobs to be done are relatively universal, these don’t change over time and are solution agnostic.
People hire products to do a job for them. The job almost always remains the same, however, the product can change over time.
A few questions to help you uncover the underlying job that customer hires your product to do:
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What did you turn to the last time you needed to do this? e.g: Radio
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Is your product so good that your audience would ‘fire’ their current product to hire yours? Focus on improving on the pain points here. e.g: Jon likes to listen to music on the radio while driving but doesn’t want to listen to ads.
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What does your product or service do for the customer? The list needs instead of features. e.g: Jon entertains himself by listening to music while driving to work vs seamless music streaming.
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Remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs? How does your product fill these needs?
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What social need does the product solve?
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What emotional need is being solved by the product?
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How will using the product make the customer feel?
Note: Often, customers might hire your product to do a different job than the one you expected. Pay close attention to these.
e.g: Early Justin.TV users tuning in to watch video game live streams vs watching Justin vlogging about his life
Part 2: Using JTBD for impactful marketing reach outs
The best marketing reach outs clearly articulate the problem consumer have and explains how the product solves the problem.
Marketing, in effect, is about telling the story of what a product does for the consumer.
When (and if) products meet the expectations set by the marketing message, the person will look to “hire” that brand or product the next time they have that need.
The best marketing reinforces these connections.
A few questions to help you identify the correct marketing messaging for your product:
- What are existing customers using our product to do?
- Reinforce the association of the product with the job done. e.g: Snicker positions itself as a hunger bar vs a candy bar. “There’s a hunger inside you … Snickers satisfies.”
Identify and stop ineffective marketing campaigns:
How well does the marketing campaign clarify the alignment of what the product does to the need the product is being hired for?
- What are the objectives of the marketing campaign (e.g. awareness, consideration, purchase)?
- How do those objectives support the alignment of the product with the job it’s being hired to do? e.g: Marketing snickers as a candy bar for kids vs a hunger bar for adults
- How well is the campaign targeted to a specific audience — that is, an audience that is likely to need the product?
Troubleshooting: We’ve built a great product but no one is buying. What’s wrong?
- Audience mismatch: You are selling to the wrong audience.
- Unclear marketing messaging: You are marketing the wrong job to the right audience.
- or you unfortunately have built a great product that no one needs
Part 3: Using JTBD for designing wonderful User Experiences
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”
In addition to the questions above, you can build a job map to better understand and describe your user stories.
A job map is a single document that details the steps your customers go through to ‘hire’ a product for a ‘job’ they need to do. You should build one job map per customer persona, per product.
Framework for defining Need statements:
- Situation: When (e.g: Traveling in the car)
- Need: I want to (e.g: Keep myself and passengers entertained)
- Goal: So (e.g: No one gets bored)
You can go deeper by filling out the JTBD canvas.
Here’s an example of how you can derive feature/product offerings by using the JTBD framework
Also checkout Airbnb's 11-star framework.
The 11-star framework combined with the JTBD can help you come up with winning features and design a better overall user experience.
Jessica Pang did a great job visualizing the Airbnb 11-star framework here.
Another Example:
This “job map” demonstrates the tasks a job applicant has to go through when applying for a job.
Jessica combines the insights from the job map to design a 10-star experience for job interviews.
Finally, based on the insights from the JTBD & 11-star framework you can build a comprehensive design persona for your user type.
Remember, the objective of a design persona is always to build empathy with the end user whereas marketing personas are used to tailor marketing messaging and reach outs.
Here is an example of a design persona of an App developer.
If you are a Miro fan like me, here are a few resources & templates to get you going.
- Constructing Need Statements Using JTBD
- Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) template for Product Managers from Product School
- Jobs to be Done template from Miro