What if you could uncover your customers’ hidden motivations and deepest needs? What if you could design products perfectly aligned with their greatest desires? Now you can, with the Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas.
We all know customers don’t purchase products just for the sake of the products themselves. Rather, they “hire” products to help accomplish important goals and tasks in their lives. A drill isn’t purchased because the customer wants a drill, but because they have a hole that needs to be drilled.
The Jobs-to-be-Done framework taps into these underlying drivers of customer behavior. It flips the script on traditional product development by putting the focus on helping customers get jobs done better.
In this post, we’ll explore the Jobs-to-be-Done thinking and how to apply it through the use of the Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas. You’ll learn:
- The surprising psychology behind why customers buy products.
- How to uncover your customers’ real goals and needs.
- A step-by-step guide to using the Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas.
- Tips to conduct interviews that reveal true motivations.
- How to translate insights into products customers love.
The Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas offers a clear path to creating products that customers not only want, but are desperate for.
What is Jobs-to-be-Done?
At the core of the Jobs-to-be-Done methodology is the visionary work of Clayton Christensen. This theory postulates that people “hire” products and services to accomplish specific jobs in their lives. The focus here is on the job the customer needs to get done, rather than the product’s features.
For example, jobs customer need done could include:
- Collaborate with my team members on projects
- Make sense of data to identify insights
- Automate repetitive tasks to save time
- Stay focused and reduce distractions while working
- Plan and organize events and activities
The key is to think about the underlying goal or outcome the customer is trying to achieve, rather than the features of the software itself. The Jobs-to-be-Done framework puts the focus on helping users accomplish their jobs successfully.
The Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas
The Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas is the cornerstone of this methodology. This powerful tool transforms chaotic customer data into an actionable framework for understanding your users’ needs. The canvas consists of six core sections that work together to paint a complete picture of your customers’ world:
- Job(s): We will show you how to define the core job your customers are trying to complete.
- Key Customer(s): Identify the specific customer segments involved in the job.
- Unmet Needs: Discover the unfulfilled requirements and pain points associated with the job.
- Desired Outcomes: Explore what customers hope to achieve when the job is done successfully.
- Obstacles: Recognize the barriers and challenges that hinder job completion.
- Competitors: Analyze the alternatives customers currently use to get the job done.
How to Conduct Jobs-to-be-Done Interviews
To gather the insights needed to fill out the canvas effectively, you must conduct interviews using the Jobs-to-be-Done framework.
The interview should consist of a series of open-ended questions like:
- “Can you tell me about the last time you tried to [get the job done]?”
- “What made you decide you needed to get this job done in the first place?”
- “How were you getting this job done before? What didn’t work about that approach?”
- “What obstacles or frustrations came up when trying to get the job done?”
- “What were you hoping would happen after getting the job done?”
- “How did you feel when the job was successful/unsuccessful?”
- “Who else was involved in getting this job done? What role did they play?”
- “What other solutions have you tried to get this job done? Why did they fail?”
- “If you had a magic wand, how would you improve the experience of getting this job done?”
- “How would your life look different if you could get this job done perfectly every time?”
The goal is to probe the customer’s thoughts, emotions, and motivations around the jobs-to-be-done. Their own words will reveal deep insights you can leverage.
Here are some best practices you should apply throughout the interview process:
- Recruit customers currently doing the job to interview.
- Listen for clues about underlying needs, desires, and frustrations.
- Probe on why certain solutions succeed or fail at getting the job done.
- Document detailed notes and user quotes to reference later.
Note that patient and thoughtful interviewing is key to revealing true customer motivations.
Filling Out the Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas
With the interview data in hand, it’s time to synthesize the insights into each section of the canvas. Below is a step-by-step process to help you identify key Jobs, Needs, Outcomes, Obstacles, and Competitors based on the information you’ve gathered. This step is crucial in creating a comprehensive and actionable Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas.
When populating the canvas:
- Pinpoint the Job-to-be-Done: Look for common wording around the functional goal customers are trying to achieve.
- Create Customer Profiles: Note patterns in demographics, behaviors, attitudes, and contextual details.
- Uncover Unmet Needs: Catalog every frustration, workaround, and desire customers mention.
- Define Success: Capture what customers describe as the ideal experience and outcome.
- Map Obstacles: Identify pain points consistently raised by multiple users.
- Learn from Competitors: List all solutions, even DIY, that customers currently use.
This process helps to transform scattered qualitative data into a systematic framework. Additionally, you’ll reveal customer insights that were previously invisible, arming your team with everything needed to deliver outstanding solutions.
Using the Canvas for Product Development
With the completed canvas you’re now able to connect the dots between your canvas and your product development.
An accurately completed Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas will enable the product team to design features that directly address customer needs, innovate solutions to overcome obstacles, optimize products to help achieve desired outcomes, benchmark against real competitor alternatives, identify gaps competitors miss, and more.
Furthermore, consider using your completed Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas to help inform product design and development strategies, such as:
Prioritize Features
The deep customer insights captured in the canvas make it easy to prioritize product features based on what will help customers get the job done better. Features can be ranked by how well they address key obstacles, unmet needs, and desired outcomes.
Check out the post on backlog prioritization using the JTDB framework here.
Drive Innovation
The canvas highlights gaps in how customers currently get the job done. These present opportunities to deliver creative solutions that make the job profoundly easier and more satisfying. The canvas spurs innovation by revealing unmet needs.
Focus Design
The key customer profiles and contextual details help design a product experience laser-focused on assisting target users with the job-to-be-done. This results in more intuitive, seamless experiences.
Benchmark Competition
The competitor analysis provides insight into how well alternative solutions succeed or fail at getting the job done. This intelligence informs how to position against competitors based on the job’s functional and emotional dimensions.
Optimize Marketing
Marketing messages can be tailored based on the desired outcomes and emotions around successfully completing the job-to-be-done. The canvas makes it easy to connect with what truly matters to customers.
Conclusion
The Jobs-to-be-Done Canvas is a powerful, structured way to uncover your customers’ true needs and desires. By focusing on the job the customer is trying to get done, you can gain a 360-degree view of their world.
Conducting thoughtful Jobs-to-be-Done interviews allows you to go beyond surface-level product feedback and understand the deep-seated goals your customers have. The canvas provides a framework to synthesize these motivations into actionable insights.
Applying a Jobs-to-be-Done lens through the canvas framework enables you to create products that align perfectly with your customers’ needs.