Personas vs. jobs-to-be-done are two powerful frameworks for understanding customers deeply. Personas are fictional representations of key user segments based on assumptions and qualitative data. Jobs-to-be-done is an approach focused on the functional, emotional, and social jobs customers want to get done which drives product and service selection.
There is often debate over which technique is more effective for guiding product development and marketing. Proponents of each method make strong claims about the benefits of their favored approach. In this guide, we will demystify personas and jobs-to-be-done. You will understand the strengths and limitations of each when to apply them, and how to blend these approaches for the clearest view of your customers.
Follow along as we unpack the persona versus jobs-to-be-done dilemma with research-backed insights.
Understanding Personas
Personas are detailed fictional representations of key customer segments developed through a mix of assumptions, qualitative data, and market research. Personas synthesize knowledge about real groups of customers into a few archetypes that embody their demographics, behaviors, frustrations, motivations, and goals.
Effective personas bring ideal customer segments to life with vivid narratives and details:
- Basic biographical info – age, location, occupation, family status
- Behavior patterns – how they interact with products, services, content
- Values and motivations – what matters to them and why
- Pain points and needs – problems they want solving
- Goals and expectations – what they aim to accomplish
Personas also have descriptive names and may even include photos, background stories, hobbies, and quotes to humanize them. Different types of personas can include:
- Primary – The main users you are targeting
- Negative – Out-of-scope users to deprioritize
- Buyer – People involved in purchase decisions
- Influential – Those who impact preferences like experts
By encapsulating customer knowledge into vivid personas, teams keep the ideal users in mind when making product decisions. Personas foster empathy and focus.
Strengths of Personas
Using personas offers several benefits:
- Humanizes customers – Personas put a relatable, human face on customer data.
- Builds empathy – Stories, details, and motivations spark emotional connections.
- Informs product decisions – Features, content, and offers can be tailored to persona needs.
- Focuses design – Interfaces and experiences can resonate with persona expectations.
- Guides messaging – Content and campaigns can be crafted for persona preferences.
- Represents user contexts – Personas model real-world user scenarios and environments.
- Simple for teams – Personas are an intuitive way to convey customer insights to all stakeholders.
- Prioritizes target users – Highlights the core segments to focus on satisfying.
However, there are also important limitations with personas to be aware of.
Limitations of Personas
While useful, personas have some inherent weaknesses:
- Based on assumptions – Details tend to be invented since comprehensive research is difficult.
- Not data-driven – Quantitative data may be limited, relying more on qualitative input.
- People behave differently – Actual individuals may act unlike the persona depictions.
- Inaccurate personas misguide – Flawed personas based on incorrect assumptions waste efforts.
- Difficulty prioritizing – With many personas, determining which ones to focus on can be challenging.
- Can reinforce stereotypes – Personas could unintentionally perpetuate biased assumptions about groups.
- Not universal – Personas always represent a segmented view of customers.
- Static over time – As customer behaviors evolve, personas may fail to stay relevant.
The subjectivity and inherent guesswork with personas means teams should be cautious about making them too central in product development. Prioritizing persona alignment is helpful but actual user research and data should carry more weight.
Supplementing personas with jobs-to-be-done is an excellent way to introduce more objective customer understanding.
Introducing Jobs-to-Be-Done
Jobs-to-be-done is a customer research framework popularized by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen. At its core, jobs-to-be-done theory states that people “hire” products and services to get specific functional, emotional, and social jobs done.
Unlike demographics or attributes, these jobs stay relatively stable over time. Jobs arise from basic human needs. Focusing on jobs provides a universal, fundamental view of customer behavior not tied to segments.
Some examples of common jobs people want to get done:
- Functional – “I need to save time cooking meals for my family”
- Social – “I want to appear stylish around my peers”
- Emotional – “I need to feel engaged with my favorite sports team”
- Consumption – “I want an indulgent dessert”
The jobs lens is powered by rigorous qualitative research. Open-ended interviews uncover jobs, unmet needs, and the situations that arise for customers. The process reveals innovation opportunities missed by traditional market research.
Products often struggle when they target demographics rather than jobs. By understanding the jobs to be done, you can build products that customers will “hire” for those jobs.
Benefits of Jobs-to-Be-Done
Adopting a jobs-to-be-done approach offers multiple advantages:
- Deep customer insights – Directly reveals functional, social, and emotional needs rather than assumptions.
- Fundamental human behavior – Jobs capture enduring, universal motivations not changing segments.
- Timeless understanding – Jobspersist over time even as segments and products evolve.
- Uncovers innovation opportunities – Missed jobs can inspire breakthrough products and features.
- Informs product development – Ensures you build what customers need to get jobs done.
- Enables new market disruption – Products fulfilling overlooked jobs can disrupt entire categories.
- Focuses strategy – Resources flow to the most critical high-value jobs to be done.
- Sparks creative thinking – Jobs lens forces you to consider fundamentally new solutions.
- Indicates hiring/firing – Why customers choose, switch, or abandon products and services.
- Quantifiable data – Jobs interviews produce concrete metrics for analysis and prioritization.
The jobs-to-be-done methodology requires diligent upfront research and may uncover surprising customer needs. However, the hard data provides more reliable guidance than assumptions and stereotypes.
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When to Use Each Approach
When should you rely on personas versus jobs-to-be-done? Here are some best practices:
- Use personas more during early product development to represent customer segments when concrete data is limited. They help teams conceptualize end users.
- Shift focus to jobs-to-be-done once research begins uncovering fundamental customer needs. Jobs should guide core product features and development.
- Leverage personas for marketing content, messaging, and creative development. Their fictional narratives and details inspire content that appeals to the target segments.
- Use jobs-to-be-done for identifying innovation opportunities, entirely new products, and potential market disruption. Jobs reveal unmet needs.
- Refer back to personas when launching products to tailor messaging and positioning for each segment’s preferences.
- Combine both approaches for a well-rounded view. Personas put a face on jobs. Jobs add data and universality to personas.
Neither tool alone can capture all customer complexity and behavior. Blending personas with jobs-to-be-done research offers balance for product teams.
Case Studies
Airbnb effectively used both personas and jobs research:
- Early on, Airbnb created personas like “No place like home” Rex representing hosts. This helped conceptualize end users.
- But intensive jobs-to-be-done research revealed hosts had unmet social jobs of forging connections through hosting. This inspired new features like user profiles.
Similarly, Intuit leveraged both techniques when developing Quickbooks:
- Personas like “Always on the go” THE Travis encapsulated small business owners they targeted. This informed positioning.
- Jobs interviews uncovered critical jobs of saving time on accounting and avoiding costly mistakes. So features like automated invoicing and reconciliation were added.
For both companies, the combined customer understanding led to a resounding product-market fit.
Personas vs. Jobs-to-be-Done: Key Takeaways
- Personas effectively humanize and visualize user segments and capture assumptions when data is limited. But they lack the objectivity of jobs-to-be-done.
- Jobs-to-be-done reveal functional, social, and emotional needs through rigorous qualitative research. But jobs don’t flesh out segments like personas.
- Personas are better for marketing messaging, campaigns, and content suited for segments. Jobs-to-be-done excels at guiding product development and innovation.
- Best practice is to start with provisional personas and then layer in jobs-to-be-done. Jobs can validate and evolve personas over time.
- For complete customer understanding, the two approaches are complementary. Personas add personalities while jobs add hard data.
Neither tool is a panacea. Consistent research is essential to refine personas and jobs-to-be-done over time. But when used in tandem at the right product stages, personas and jobs-to-be-done provide a multifaceted view of customers. Teams can marry empathy for users with hard insights into their unmet needs.