Connecting Needs and Value

Jobs to be Done (JTBD) is a method for identifying opportunities to provide value by understanding what outcomes people are trying to achieve in a given circumstance. We all have many objectives that we endeavor to accomplish each day, from the time we wake up in the morning until we go to bed. We use a toothbrush to clean our teeth, we drink coffee or energy drinks in order to get energy to start our day, we use a car to travel to work, we use the phone to communicate with our friends and loved ones, we drink Gatorade to replenish our electrolytes after a hard workout. These are all JTBD and we “hire” some mechanism to help us to achieve these outcomes.

There’s a common misconception that customers usually know what they want. I think the reality is that as consumers we often don’t know what we need, or what might delight us until that experience has been revealed to us in some way. We may have basic desires that need to be filled, but we aren’t aware of just how to fulfill those needs. This is where design and design research comes into play, to understand how to best fulfill those needs. Similarly, often businesses make things for people but they don’t understand what actual value they are providing for people so they make things or add features to things that offer little to no real value to customers. In each instance, it’s important to understand the “why” in order to understand how to actually provide value to customers. The main “why” is the need or outcome that the user is trying to achieve. “Jobs” are the actions taken in order to achieve that outcome. JBTD is such a powerful tool because it not only thinks about outcomes, but it zeroes in on what actions people will gravitate toward in order to meet those outcomes. JBTD isn’t a silver bullet but it is one of many methods that designers of things and experiences can use in order to understand how they should approach creating value.