We’ve all seen the Clayton Christensen drive-through milkshakes video, heard the Snickers story and possibly brought the mattress; but many years on, JTBD (jobs to be done) still means different things to different people. At Redgate, JTBD is now a key part of our design toolkit. It gives us a top-down, solution-agnostic understanding of users’ needs; along with an understanding of the situation and context in which those needs manifest. We’ll talk about how JTBD helps us to discover new opportunities for innovation and to connect design decisions back to the jobs our products seek to address.
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
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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?
19. 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.
23. 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.
25. 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.
26. 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.
28. 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.
29. 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.
35. 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”
36. 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
37. 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
38. 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
39. 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.
40.
41.
42. John has some Jobs to-be-done
REDGATE HELPS JOHN TO BECOME A BETTER DBA: FUNCTIONALLY, EMOTIONALLY AND SOCIALLY
47. 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?
Matt, Head of Product Design
Natalia, Product Designer at Redgate
We’re not going to talk about: Milkshakes, Snickers bars or power drills
You’ve seen, heard these examples many times now!
We’re going to try and describe why we (the design team at Redgate) hired JTBD…
...as well as our account of how we’ve been using the framework
Call out from the beginning that we’re still on a journey and not there yet!
Just a tiny bit of background to help set the context...
Less about your product, more about how it helps them make progress in their personal or professional lives
Look beyond your product or service to find the real Job your customer is trying to get done.
Pivotal change in mindset.
The Jobs (and the need for a solution) come about where there is a gap between your actual self and desired self
Theory of Jobs-as-Progress therefore sees people hire products in these moments of struggle: Mario > Super Mario
Emmett's example of tools/product amplifying or enhancing users’ abilities
Ultimately, your product/service is a means to a greater end! A sense of self-betterment.
I’m not buying the product because I need another clock or a nightlight...I’m buying the clock to get a better nights sleep
JTBD is to ‘Improve the quality of my sleep, so that I can focus and be more productive during the day.’
Current situation (kids not sleeping through) has given rise to the need for me to seek a solution to this job
Now kids sleep through I’ve hired a sleep tracker...situation has changed, but my jobs remains.
Products that will help me make progress with this will come and go but the job remains!
Amongst different (and in some cases competing) interpretations of job theory there are four key principles that hold true:
The JTBD or the outcome (as opposed to their ability to perform a task) becomes the focus of your research & analysis: How/to what degree do we help someone make progress in their lives?
Encourages us to operate in the problem-space, open to finding new/creative ways of enabling customers to get their job done, or get that that job done even better!
Solutions will come and go but the job is stable - focusing on the job allows companies to reliably & repeatedly innovate
Think beyond the utilitarian aspects of products and design for social and emotional needs (Be goals vs. Do goals)
On our journey to find out more about JTBD...we came across these key influencers (job theorists)
Jobs-as-Progress - people hire products to make progress with their ‘Be’ goals i.e. achieve self-betterment e.g. Be a better parent
Jobs-as-Activities - more utilitarian view and focuses on Do goals, thing we do in service of our Be goals e.g. Get a better nights sleep
This is a Forces diagram that I’m going to use a metaphor to illustrate why we adopted JTBD
What were the factors triggering a search and pulling us towards a new solution?
What habits and anxieties have prevented us from adopting JTBD sooner?
Realisation that we had a limited understanding of customers and their true motivations (goals)
We knew how products were working for them from a functional perspective. How easy can you use it? Does it function as expected?
But, lacking any critical analysis of how and to what degree our products were meeting customers’ desired outcomes
Therefore, difficult to reasonably prioritise how and where best to add value.
Designing through the narrow lens of existing products (bottom-up)
Small tweaks to usability or optimising individual products/point tools
But, customers are looking for solutions & experiences designed to address their bigger goals…
They don’t think about individual tools/products...just their business or professional outcomes
Because of these pushes we started to look for solutions….
JTBD helps us to understand customers’ underlying motivations - the real reason why someone purchased our products
What progress were they hoping to make as a business, as a professional - aka the Job-to-be-Done
Insight into the forces at play when people decide to buy/not to buy our products - what are their reasons for switching to/from a competing product
What other solutions does your product compete with? E.g. the Gro Clock competes with the sleep tracker in the job of improving quality of sleep
Top-down, outcome-focused approach to design & innovation
Bottom-up: HMW improve/optimise product x (local maxima)? Focuses on the product
Top-down: HMW help customers to better achieve their broader goals? Focuses on the customer and their goals
Integrating or interconnecting products or creating entirely new solutions - that help customers get more of their job done
The job becomes the fundamental unit of analysis
We had to think more holistically than our currently team model typically promotes
Broaden the gaze/scope of any individual Product Designer and Product Team
Work more collaboratively with other designers, when they have been used to working more independently
But hard to change mindset of teams with their own personal missions and goals!
Build up a lot of muscle memory with evaluative research methods e.g. task-based usability testing
Easier/more comfortable to anchor conversations to the product and how it was performing
Had to improve generative methods and analysis e.g. introduce switch style interview questions
At the same time, balance and re-prioritise our research efforts - strategic vs.tactical on different horizons (ref James’ talk)
As you peel back the layers you start to abstract beyond something you might (as a product company) reasonably design for.
Gro Company are unlikely to tackle a broader Be goal of ‘Improving people’s quality of sleep’’.
But, they would tackle ‘Reduce the struggles of parents battling with babies not sleeping’.
And with that job in mind they have released a whole range of baby sleep products including the Gro Clock
The job you choose to serve should still align with your mission and company goals
Customers will often describe task-oriented needs associated with the current solution
Less natural to start with conversations about the person and how they felt in particular moments of struggle
But, ultimately we’re still designing for people, even when we’re working with business products.
Can differentiate if we learn to design for these social and emotional factors.
We decided to hire
But we’re not there yet...
Still lots to learn, many others to convince
Jim Kalbach sums this up perfectly for me...
JTBD is starting to provide us with…”a lense through which to understand value creation.”
Natalia is now going to give us an overview of how we’ve applied this in a product scenario
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals
TO be experience under testing now and receiving great feedback.We are choosing one possible solution, it’s not the only one and can be failed.
TO be experience under testing now and receiving great feedback.We are choosing one possible solution, it’s not the only one and can be failed.
TO be experience under testing now and receiving great feedback.We are choosing one possible solution, it’s not the only one and can be failed.
From the interviews we uncovered motivations from John.DBA is a librarian and he has to mind the books and everything is working well.No book is missing. Using analogies. Interviewing John, type of interview, we focused on to understand what’s a day to day life of a dba.
Switch interviews needs to be mentioned. Persona identified, Key activities, Behaviours, Pains, Goals