Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) in Product Design × DUMBO

Illustration showcasing the "Jobs to Be Done" (JTBD) framework with various food items such as a milkshake, Snickers, donut, banana, and bagel

Key Points

The Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework focuses on understanding customer motivations by identifying the specific jobs they want to accomplish.
It helps product teams drive targeted innovation by aligning product development with customers’ desired outcomes.
JTBD also emphasizes segmenting users based on jobs rather than demographics and highlights the importance of addressing emotional, social, and functional jobs to create user-centric products.

What is JTBD?

Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) is a customer-centric framework that delves into understanding motivations and aspirations by identifying the specific jobs customers seek to complete. A "job" is defined as the process of reaching an objective under given circumstances. This perspective shifts the focus from the product to the customers’ problem-solving process, emphasising that people “hire” products and services to get their job done, not to engage with a product or its organisation.

We can’t build the products of tomorrow when we limit ourselves to the needs and expectations associated with the products of today. Instead, we should focus on what never changes for customers: their desire for progress.

Alan Clement

When Coffee and Kale Compete

What is an example of a Job in the JTBD framework?

A well-known example of JTBD is the milkshake example, in which McDonald's discovered that customers were "hiring" milkshakes to perform a specific job during their morning commutes: to help them pass the time. Initially, McDonald's attempted to increase milkshake sales by making them cheaper, chunkier, chewier, and chocolatier, but this did not produce the desired results.

JTBD analysis revealed that milkshakes competed with bananas (too quickly consumed), doughnuts (too crumbly and messy), bagels (dry and tasteless), and Snickers bars (that induced guilt). Concluding that customers preferred milkshakes that lasted longer, McDonald's thickened them and added fruit chunks to increase appeal. This resulted in a sevenfold increase in milkshake sales over McDonald's initial expectations before conducting the JTBD analysis.

Why is JTBD important?

JTBD emphasizes an approach that focuses on customers' specific objectives and constraints rather than simply implementing or improving product features. JTBD helps product teams gain a deeper understanding of what motivates and challenges their customers by identifying the exact jobs customers seek to complete. It enables them to drive more targeted and significant innovation instead of competing against luck (a book we suggest).

JTBD improves usability by clarifying how customers interact with the product, revealing challenges, and pinpointing areas for improvement. This focus promotes outcome-driven innovation, ensuring that new features add significant value while also improving product success and market differentiation. Businesses that define a job-based value proposition can more effectively ensure their products meet critical customer objectives.

JTBD also fits well with modern approaches like design thinking, agile practices, and lean startup principles, improving how these methods work together. By providing a thorough understanding of customer jobs, JTBD improves the effectiveness of these methodologies, resulting in better product development outcomes.

How to identify a job

To start your JTBD analysis effectively, interact directly with your customers through methods like in-depth JTBD interviews or ethnographic observations. This helps uncover the real jobs customers seek to complete, the circumstances in which those jobs arise, the forces that pull them towards a solution or push them away from it, the tradeoffs they make, and the objectives they are trying to make progress toward. Use the findings of your JTBD analysis to generate ideas for new features or product enhancements.

Get insights in two weeks with our JTBD Sprint.

Guiding product development with JTBD principles to drive innovation

Jobs to be Done significantly influences product development by offering a clear, user-centered framework for decision-making.

Identify jobs to uncover opportunities and business potential: Begin by identifying the main jobs that your customers want to complete using qualitative research methods such as JTBD interviews and observations. This leads to targeted product innovation and customization since you know exactly what problems your customers are looking to solve. It makes better use of resources by concentrating efforts on the most important customer jobs. It leads to increased market reach by providing products and services that are specifically tailored to the jobs of your target group.
Prioritize jobs and outcomes to inform roadmaps and feature development: Define the desired outcomes for each job you've identified. Clearly articulating these jobs and outcomes creates a concrete set of criteria that your product must meet, ensuring that design and development efforts are focused on what is truly important to customers. Prioritize them based on their importance and how satisfied customers are with existing solutions. This allows you to focus on the most critical areas or the areas with the greatest opportunity for your product to have a significant impact.
Set up a value proposition that resonates with your target audience. Use JTBD insights to refine and optimize your value proposition, making sure it addresses your customers' most important jobs and objectives.
Define goals and align stakeholders. Share JTBD insights with all stakeholders involved in product development, such as designers, developers, marketers, product managers, and other team members. This promotes cross-disciplinary alignment and collaboration, ensuring that everyone is working toward the same goals and is motivated by a common vision – that is, how you can improve the live of your customers.
Define success metrics and the definition of done: By linking each metric to a specific job, desired outcome, and context, you can improve Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and assess the success of your activities more effectively. Establish metrics such as ODI surveys, task satisfaction scores, and analytics to assess how well your product aligns with the identified jobs and objectives. This leads to a user-centered definition of done, ensuring that the product actually simplifies customers' lives.

Use JTBD insights to inform user experience design

Knowing the customer's objectives, jobs, and contexts helps UX designers create solutions that exceed user expectations, resulting in more effective experiences:

Target group segmentation: Unlike traditional segmentation based on demographic characteristics and ostensibly"emphatic" stereotypes, job performer segmentation focuses on the specific job that users wish to complete. Start by segmenting your target audience with JTBD insights. Your customers are united by their common jobs. Jobs that are only partially shared result in distinct segments. It makes no difference who does the job (based on demographics or stereotypical characteristics). Our goal is to satisfy everyone who seeks to get the job done as well as possible. By focusing on job performers, we are more likely to notice similarities than differences.
Crafting the Message: Use JTBD data to create a design narrative that focuses on your users' key jobs. This ensures that interactions and interfaces are functional, engaging and relevant. Clearly explain how delivering this product, service, or feature will improve the user's life. JTBD helps us in establishing outcomes that place the user at the center of the design process. Use these user-centric outcomes to align your stakeholders around specific UX objectives. Achieving these will also improve business outcomes. Discussing user objectives with senior management in this manner allows design leaders to connect an improved user experience with important key business metrics, such as increased retention and new subscriptions.
Design how a job is done: Using JTBD data, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of the steps required to complete a job from the user's perspective. This understanding contributes to the creation of intuitive workflows and interfaces that follow the natural progression of the job. By identifying the pain points and challenges that users face while trying to complete their tasks, you can create solutions that directly address and alleviate these problems. You can also introduce additions as gain creators, that users may not expect but will greatly enjoy. These add to the emotional and social aspects of a job, creating memorable moments and enriching the overall user experience.

Best practices for applying Jobs to be Done in product design

When applying JTBD to product design, consider these best practices:

Focus on the job, not the product: Highlight the jobs users seek to complete instead of focusing on product features. This shift in perspective helps to understand the larger context in which users strive for progress.
Segment by job, not demographics: Group your insights based on distinct job performers and the jobs they seek to complete instead of relying on traditional demographic segmentation. This approach often leads to more valuable findings for product development and marketing.
Identify emotional and social jobs, not only functional matters: Users frequently have jobs that are emotional("help me to feel..."), social ("help me to be perceived as..."), and functional ("help me to..."). Understanding the emotional and social dimensions of a job can help you gain a better understanding of user behaviour and preferences, as well as the underlying motivations that drive user interaction.
Use the Wheel of Progress, instead of conducting unstructured interviews: The Wheel of Progress provides structure to the JTBD interview, making it easier to compare and evaluate information and choose the right level of detail.
Prioritise by opportunity score, not by guesswork: To ensure robustness, quantify and confirm your qualitative insights. Using the opportunity score, prioritise the most important jobs and desired outcomes based on their impact and user satisfaction levels.
Validate the job, not the concept: Stop validating your concept and instead prove that your solution addresses the right jobs and objectives.

Conclusion

The concept of Jobs to Be Done resonates because it cuts through the noise, allowing product developers to focus on what is truly important—the user's desired progress, not the product. People don't just buy things to own them; they use products and services to solve specific problems or improve their lives in some meaningful way. Jobs to be Done allows us to step into their shoes and see how they deal with their unique challenges. The product's bells and whistles are less important than whether it serves the user's purpose in a way that is consistent with their life and goals.

When we talk about using Jobs to be Done in product design, we mean embracing the messy reality of what people are trying to accomplish. Products serve as change agents for users, providing tools for navigating emotional, social, and functional landscapes. At the heart of JTBD is the idea that people care about making progress rather than just consuming products—a viewpoint that flips the script on product development. By focusing on this deeper understanding, design becomes more than just aesthetics or convenience, but about enabling users to achieve their goals.