1.
Beyond Milkshakes: Using JTBD for
Innovation & Product Design

2.
Who are we?
Natalia Rey - Product
Designer
Matt Godfrey - Head of
Product Design

3.
What we’re not going to talk about...

4.
A little bit of
background...

5.
“Customers don’t want
your product or what it
does; they want help
making their lives better.”
Alan Klement

6.
What is a Job?

7.
What is a Job?
What I’m buying: A better
nights sleep so I can focus
& be more productive.
What I’m sold: A ‘Gro
Clock’...then a sleep
tracker...then?
Customer: Matt, a busy
dad of two with kids on a
different body clock!
+ =
Where I am now Where I want to
be
Situations

8.
Key Principles of JTBD
1. Outcome focused
What customers want to achieve vs.
the tasks or activities they currently do.
2. Solution agnostic
Rooted in better analysis of the full
problem-space vs. solution-space.
3. Stable over time
Whilst situations, technology and
expectations change, jobs are stable.
4. Functional, social & emotional
A single job comprises of functional,
social and emotional components.

9.
Key Influencers
Anthony Ulwick -
Outcome Driven
Innovation
Alan Klement:
The Job Story
Bob Moesta et
al: The Switch
Interview
Clayton
Christensen:
Theory of
Progress
Jobs-as-Progress Jobs-as-Activities

10.
Why did we hire
JTBD?
Reasons for switching

11.
Why we hired: The Pushes
Connect research with strategy
Limited understanding of customers and
their goals compromised our ability to
identify and articulate new, potentially
more valuable opportunities.

12.
Why we hired: The Pushes
Point tool vs. Solution mindset
Mindset of designing for point tools,
when customers are actually looking for
solutions that might enable them to
accomplish their bigger goals.

13.
Why we hired: The Pulls
Get to the primary ‘why?’
JTBD promises a way to understand what
customers are really trying to achieve.
The underlying motivation and struggle
that caused them to buy (hire) our
products.

14.
Why we hired: The Pulls
Higher order of analysis
JTBD provides a top-down, outcome-
centric approach to design and
innovation. The job (rather than your
product) is the unit of analysis.

15.
Why we hired: Habits
Teams work largely in silos
JTBD required us to think outside of
what we’d normally consider to be a
teams’ problem space. Would have to
change the way we work as designers.

16.
Why we hired: Habits
Focus on evaluative methods
Traditionally we’ve focused on
evaluative research methods, but we’d
have to change our approach to
discover and analyse customers’ jobs.

17.
Why we hired: Anxieties
Right level of abstraction?
Struggled to find right level of
abstraction - What jobs can or should
we reasonably design for that still
aligned with our business goals?

18.
Why we hired: Anxieties
Finding emotion is hard
Functional, more utilitarian jobs are
easier to identify. Harder to extract
emotional and social motivations,
particularly with business products.

19.
“A lense through
which to
understand value
creation.”
Jim Kalbach

20.
Case
Study/Example
Provisioning

21.
Context
Databases - boxes
where data lives
When shopping with your
credit card, details of your
card, your account and the
transaction will be stored in a
database and passed to your
bank for processing.

22.
Companies
Production databases
Companies have to be very
careful with their use of data,
restricting who can access these
production databases.
New regulations around it.

23.
Target audience
Personas and JTBD.
This is John, our database administrator.
He is the guard of production, and
thanks to him, no data can be missed,
shared or saved in non-secure locations.
He is like a librarian, and he has to mind his
books.

24.
Updates in databases
Engineers need to make changes to their
systems frequently and these databases
need to be updated.
A very important part of his role is to
provide copies of production database to
developers so then they can work on those
copies - without touching production.

25.
John has some Jobs-to-be-Done

26.
Redgate
We are a technology company that
innovates in providing SQL Server solutions
for IT teams.
Here’s SQL Provision, a solution that
serves most of John’s jobs.
We are going to talk about this solution that
designers at Redgate have been working on.

27.
Hiring Jobs-to-be-Done
To provide a better understanding of John
and his functional jobs: Monitoring,
provisioning and troubleshooting.
Emotional: Loves tech and he is constantly
looking for better solutions.
Social: He needs to be seen as someone
reliable, who can always save the day.

28.
How well does SQL Provision serve John’s jobs?

29.
John’s Journey

30.
Job story
“When copies fail John wants to be able to know what
happened - why they failed, when they failed - so he can fix
the problem and create the copy again faster - as he knows
what happened he won’t make the same errors again”

31.
Job story
“When copies fail John wants to be able to know what
happened - why they failed, when they failed - so he can fix
the problem and create the copy again faster - as he knows
what happened he won’t make the same errors again”
PROBLEM FRAMED NOT SOLUTIONS AT THIS POINT
SITUATIONN MOTIVATIONN
EXPECTED OUTCOMEN
PERSONAN

32.
How we might solve it?
John’s problem becomes our problem too - it’s our business goal.
IDEAS BRAINSTORMED TOGETHER - DECIDE - MATCH BACK TO THE JOB STORY

33.
The experiment
WE EXPECT PEOPLE USE THE
ACTIVITY FEED TO IDENTIFY
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN
SOMETHING FAILS.
1. PEOPLE SPEND A CONSIDERABLE
AMOUNT OF TIME USING THE
ACTIVITY FEED.
2. PEOPLE GIVE A POSITIVE RESPONSE
WHEN SURVEYED ASKING “DID IT
HELP YOU TO UNDERSTAND WHAT
HAPPENED?
WE WILL KNOW IF WE SUCCEED IF

34.
When copies fail I want to be able to know what happened - why they failed, when they
failed - so I can fix the problem and create the copy again faster - as I know what
happened I won’t make the same errors again.

35.
John has some Jobs to-be-done
REDGATE HELPS JOHN TO BECOME A BETTER DBA: FUNCTIONALLY, EMOTIONALLY AND SOCIALLY

36.
What have we changed?

37.
John’s JTBD
John’s AS-IS
scenario
Job Story
(problem framed)
Ideation Experiment TO-BE experience
1 2 3
4 5 6

38.
Summary

39.
Key Takeaways
1. JTBD is a great framework for understanding causality & motivation
2. Focus on outcomes (personal or professional) vs. products and features
3. Learn by doing. Practice and apply JTBD to your own business context
4. Principles & mindset are more important than the tools!
5. Start small. Think about your last purchase...what was the real JTBD?

40.
Recommended Reading

41.
We’re hiring Product Designers!
Find out more:
Redgate Design
@MatthewGodfrey
@mikitcha
@uxredgate