Why I ditched user need statements & created the CMBAT framework

Establishing a new framework that helped one of the biggest travel companies in the world define & prioritise their product vision

In March of 2022, as a lowly Lead Designer, I was asked if I could help lead a project that would end up defining the 3–5 year product vision for one of the world’s leading travel companies.

Oh… and I only had 3 months to do it…

I’m planning to write more about how I defined the entire vision process from scratch which ended up including hundreds of stakeholders… but first I want to touch on the part that became the foundation for every aspect of the success of this project.

And that is…

“Customer must be able to…” statements

or “CMBAT” statements (pronounced like Combat)

User needs & JTBD 👎

The thing is, throughout my many years as a designer and more importantly as a designer in leadership, I’ve seen user needs and jobs to be done presented and utilised as a part of prioritisation and strategy definition work. But I’ve never seen them get used past the initial input phase.

Researchers do a tremendous amount of work to define them but then they’re just thrown into the pile with the rest of the research and analytics…