An introduction to the Jobs to Be Done customer research/insights framework, with a focus on how product managers can put Jobs to Be Done into practice with key tools such as customer interviews, surveys, prototyping, and A/B testing.

1. Jobs To Be Done
An Introduction
Michele Hansen

2. About me
Co-Founder, Geocodio
Co-Organizer, DC Jobs To Be Done Meetup
MBA Candidate, Virginia Tech
Formerly
Product Development Manager & Product Manager, The Motley Fool
Technical Project Manager & Product Manager, Engage

3. About you
When was the last time you spoke with a customer?
- In the context of support?
- Sales?
- Usability?
- Interviews?
- Another context?

4. Key Takeaways
 What is Jobs to be Done and how it’s impactful
 How it fits in with other product management frameworks and tools
 How you can put it in practice
JTBD is as much a way of thinking as it
is a set of tools.

5. People don’t want a quarter-
inch drill. They want a
quarter-inch hole.
Theodore Levitt

6. What is JTBD?
 Created by Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business
School
 Innovator’s Dilemma
 Framework for product development, product
management, and
product marketing
 Central idea: A customer hires a product to get a job
done.

7. “Job” is shorthand for
what an individual really
seeks to accomplish in
a given circumstance.
- Clayton M. Christensen

9. Case Study: Banco Davivienda
Market leader in Colombian banking market
Problem: almost 50% of Colombians didn’t have a bank account
Research
→
Testing →
Solution: Streamlined, easier-
to-use bank accounts
...and it failed.
As team members analyzed the data, they came to realize that although
they had commissioned a market study and talked to a few customers, but
they hadn’t understood the jobs to be done for the unbanked. Rather, they
had let their knowledge of existing customers and solutions distort their
understanding of the problem. From The Innovator’s Method, page 97

10. “We decided to go out and try to understand what
people wanted, not by asking directly ‘What do
you want?’ but by trying to understand how people
behave in real life.”
– Banco Davivienda team member, quoted in The Innovator’s Method

11. Process
 Enthnographic analysis
 Talk to people, observe, and be a fly-on-the-wall
 Created customer profiles with jobs-to-be-done, motivations,
behaviors, and other characteristics
 Martha, who receives government payments and sends domestic
remittances, and has to stand in line for hours each day to do so
Solution
A mobile wallet that let people receive money (such as government
subsidies) and send money without ever going to a branch
 Solution was adopted by hundreds of thousands of users in
Colombia
 Expanded to other countries with similar user behaviors
Case Study: Banco Davivienda

12. Activity-based design: the evolution
of human-centered design
Where they’re similar
 Customer-focused
 Heavily invest in customer research and insights
 Iterative based on customer feedback
Where they’re different
 Designing for activities rather than specific humans
 Human processes and situations over humans

13. Jobs are irrespective of products -- and
exist throughout time.

14. Let’s talk about food
Rebecca is 37, married with two children, and works as a visual designer at a non-profit. She
enjoys yoga and watching The Crown, and is Vice President of the PTA at her children’s
elementary school. She uses an iPhone.
What will Rebecca hire for lunch today?
Different situations→ different jobs → hiring
different solutions
It depends on the situation! Is it lunch with her boss to discuss her goals this year, a quick
sandwich with coworkers that she wants to eat at her desk, or is she home sick?
What will Rebecca hire for dinner?
It depends on the situation! Is her husband is away for work, date night with her husband, a
reunion with college girlfriends?

15. “Successful devices are those that fit
gracefully into the requirements of the
underlying activity, supporting them in a
manner understandable by people.
Understand the activity, and the device
is understandable.”
Don Norman

16. Different types of jobs, all working
together Functional
 “We need to eat dinner on Friday.”
 Social
 “I want to relax and have fun with my husband, without the kids around.”
 Emotional
 “If we could just connect more deeply in a way we can’t on a daily basis, I
would be so happy.”
 Intellectual
 “If only there was a way for us to just have more time to talk as adults.”
 Physical
 “I wish we could take away all of the things that normally get between us at
dinner.”
 Sensory

17. When do you use JTBD?
 During the discovery or ideation stage
 During the design process to shape and test designs
 In development to inform decisions
 When creating user personas
 Continually to ensure the product is helping customers accomplish
their desired outcomes
 And so forth...
Jobs to be Done should be used continually and alongside other
tools, like customer journey mapping, surveying, prototyping, and
usability testing

18. The JTBD Toolbox
 Interviews
 The Timeline
 Forces Diagram
 Job Stories
 Desired Outcome
Statements
 Surveys
 Prototyping
 A/B Testing
 Customer Journey
Maps
 User Personas (sort
of)

19. JTBD Interviews
 Why? Learn a customer’s timeline, and learn the words they
use to describe their experience
 This will help you in creating surveys to see how insights
learned from interviews scale
 Who? Prospective, current, or past customers
 How many? Stop when you start hearing the same things over
and over again
 In my experience, ranges from 5-15 for a discrete research
project
 For ongoing, 1-3 per week

20. What a JTBD interview is not
 A usability session
 Make it clear they don’t need the product in front of them, and don’t ask
them to go through the product/service
 An onboarding session
 Avoid talking to people who’ve just bought the product
 An upsell or sales opportunity
 Can be tempting if they express a need you know the company solves!
You can always follow up later. (If this happens, dig into solutions they’ve
looked at. This is good data for improving customer awareness
strategies.)
 A venue for soliciting or responding product or service feedback
 They might bring it up. Capture it and move on, do not reply (even if they
say something you know the answer to). Say “I’ll have to follow up on

21. There are only two people you
should listen to: someone
who has just paid for your
product or someone who has
just canceled.
Jason Fried

22. Key Questions to Answer in a JTBD
Interview1. Where are they now?
2. How do they want their life to be better?
3. What obstacles stand in their way?
4. What have they already tried?

23. The Timeline

24. Forces Diagram

25. Conducting an Interview: Tips
 Create an environment of safety. Never correct them, and play
dumb if you need to. You want them to be comfortable with you and
open up.
 Use their words. If they say your product name wrong, go with it. Get
in their head and exercise practical empathy.
 Remember to pause. Give them space to speak -- more than you
think they need. They will fill the space.
 Don’t be afraid to dig in. Ask them to repeat, or purposefully repeat
what they’ve said in a way that’s slightly wrong. When they correct
you, it will be enlightening.
 Ask a reaching-for-the-door question. “Is there anything else you
want me to know?” Ask this question halfway through the interview

26. Interview Logistics
 Plan for 30-60 minutes
 Use a script
 Have a partner if you can
 Record the interview (always ask permission)
 And have transcripts made
 Compensate them for their time
 Such as a $25 Amazon gift card
 Free stuff from your company can be nice but delicate and
depend on your brand (such as a 1-year free subscription
extension or mailing them a branded hat)

27. Who should do
customer
research?

30. Doing interviews 🔥
Sharing your interview results with others 🔥 🔥
Having team members join you in interviews🔥 🔥
🔥
Having every member of the team join interviews
regularly 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

31. Surveys
 Pain + Frequency
 Satisfaction + Importance
 (Top Task)

32. Surveys: Pain and Frequency
Given the activities expressed in interviews, how do those experiences scale across
a larger user segment?
1. How frequently do they do the activities?
2. How painful do they find them?BIG
SMALL
FREQUENT
RARE
✔✔
✔
✔
❌

33. Not all good products make good
businesses1. Beware of small, rare problems
2. Beware of offering a cheap, complex product
• And a cheap one with high-touch onboarding
3. Beware of solving problems people don’t know about or don’t care
about
4. Beware of solving problems you can’t experience yourself
• Caveat: Practical Empathy

34. Surveys: Satisfaction and Importance
(Gap Analysis) After you have a functioning prototype/MVP/product
 Can be done before or after a Top Task analysis
 Key questions
 Are they happy with how they can accomplish key tasks?
 How important are those tasks to them?

35. Desired Outcome Statements
➔ High-level vision for what you help users accomplish
➔ Ideally, shared and consistent throughout the entire
organization
➔ Informs tactical outcomes but does not dictate them
➔ High level of a job story

36. A desired outcome statement should be
“devoid of solutions, measurable,
controllable, unambiguous and guides
the creation of customer value.”
Tony Ulwick
Author, Jobs to Be Done: From Theory to Practice and
JTBD Consultant

37. Job Stories

38. Job Stories vs User Stories
Job Stories are…
 Situation and activity based
 Include the expected outcome
“When I put money in my checking account, I want to earn interest, so I can
have more financial security.”
User Stories are…
 Based around a specific type of user
 But do other users also engage in that activity or share that Job?
“As a middle-aged housewife, I want to save money, so that I can have more
financial security.”

39. User Personas: The Controversy
➔ There’s controversy in the JTBD world about the role and use of user
personas
➔ Some practitioners (Ulwick) prefer to only create Job Maps
Jobs To Be Done is a valuable exercise for product and service teams.
Persona creation and validation is equally as valuable. Together, they
make for a combined activity that paints a clear picture for our teams of
who is using our product and what they’re trying to achieve.
Jeff Gothelf
Author, Sense and Respond
➡️ Use them to give context to needs of a
segment ⬅️

40. Prototyping
 Prototype first, then A/B test
 Create a simple prototype
 Doesn’t have to be fully functional but should be clickable
 “What would you expect to happen if you clicked that?”
 Remote sessions
 UserTesting.com
 Can filter for specific types of users, such as income, products
used, etc
 In-person sessions

41. A/B Testing
 Use your understanding of customers’ jobs to inform A/B tests
 If they don’t work, dig in and ask why
 For live feedback in addition to traffic/event analytics, insert a
poll that pops up when the user navigates away (Hotjar)

42. Summary
 We learned what Jobs to be Done is
 How it fits in with other product management tools
 How you can put it in practice
 Interviews
 The Timeline
 Forces Diagram
 Surveys
 Prototyping & Testing

43. Further reading
1. The Innovator’s Method
2. Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice
3. Sense and Respond (authors of Lean UX)

44. Thanks!
@mjwhansen
michele@geocod.io
DC Jobs To Be Done Meetup