How to Create Products and Services That People Actually Use

A brief introduction to Jobs to Be Done

When designing new products and services or figuring out how to improve existing ones, most would agree that good competitive analysis is a great place to start. An extremely common pitfall is simply looking at the current offerings of direct competitors and searching for gaps. The problem is, your direct competitors are probably doing this too.

So instead of looking only at what people are buying from your competitors, solving the puzzle of why they are buying is often far more insightful.

In order to get to the why, you have to dig deep to discover what actually motivates the customers to take out their wallet (or why they won’t!). Understanding the motivations behind buying decisions makes it clear who your true competitors are (often not who you think it is!) and where to focus in order to better meet your customer’s needs.

A couple great examples of companies really understanding customer motivation are Ford who didn’t compete with the boutique/niche car makers of the time but instead took on the horse-drawn carriage market and Southwest Airlines who went after long-distance car travel instead of going head-to-head with the large airline incumbents of the time. These decisions were so successful that not only did they manage to out-maneuver their direct competition, they also ended up growing the overall market of the industries they competed in by tapping into a market the others ignored.

A simple way to begin discovering these motivations is to think of your customer’s buying decisions as a hiring process: what type of role are they trying to fill? is this a new role? who/what was doing this job previously? is this an entry-level or expert job? how often do they hire for this role? how do they find candidates?

The Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework is an excellent tool to help uncover a customer’s motivations when examining why they “hire” a product or service.

There is an excellent (and free!) book on the topic, When Coffee and Kale Compete. In it they use the example of a simple backyard grill. At first glance it would seem that people hire a grill for a job like “help me cook my food,” but on closer inspection, people actually hire a grill to perform jobs like “help me become an amazing party host for friends”. In that example, the competitor to the grill could be a cooking class versus a fancier grill with more features.

JTBD also helps uncover anxieties that might be preventing someone from making a purchase (“What would I even cook on a grill?” “How do I plan a party?”). In that case, a grill company could address these concerns with an ecosystem of related products and educational material (which is what Weber grill does and likely why they have been successful for so long).

We recently used JTBD in our analysis of Apple’s 2018 WWDC keynote to look at how Apple focuses on consumer anxieties to address the shift in public perspective towards tech companies.

Working with JTBD is not a one time thing, but an integral part of a holistic business strategy. It gives User Research, Market Research, and Customer Development an increased focus that will help you understand why a product is not gaining traction, or reduce the risk of going after a new market.

It’s a win-win for both people and organizations when products and services are designed to solve real problems that exist right now, and the Jobs to Be Done framework is a great tool to have in the toolbox.

by Kito Dietrich, CEO and Amanda McGlothlin, Chief Design Officer of Headquarters HQ

Headquarters HQ is connecting the digital and physical world. Our mission is to equip and inspire every individual and community to pursue autonomy, mastery, purpose.

Need help on getting Jobs to Be Done going at your organization? Let’s work together — learn more at hq.services.