“Jobs to Be Done” is How Innovation Happens

I had never considered the main ideas that are the basis of the Jobs to Be Done framework until design school, but those concepts are so important to understand, especially if you are someone who wants to create something innovative that will change the world. It can be overwhelming when you consider all the current products, services, companies, and initiatives that exist in our society, how could you possibly come up with something that does not already exist? How do people do it?

The simple quote by Theodore Levitt says it all: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”. The Jobs to Be Done framework helps focus the mission of your potential product/service on solving the underlying task/ goals that your user wants to achieve through using your product. What is the best way to give a user a quarter-inch hole? Is it a super intuitive and easy-to-use drill? Or is it something different altogether? Considering the different approaches to enabling users to create the specific sized hole they want (or even one step further, figuring out a way to make the hole unnecessary), is the way that innovation takes place.

The idea that users “hire” a product to help them achieve a job to be done might seem a little weird at first, especially since in our capitalist society people buy things without really even knowing why they need them. However, even in the case of a person who impulse purchases a set of different sized decorative boxes from Home Goods, that person could have an underlying goal of organizing their household items, and have an even further underlying goal of feeling like their life is more put together despite their busy schedule. Unfortunately, this person probably will not satisfy their jobs to be done with those decorative boxes, because they are not an accomplished organizer and decorator who is actively looking for those boxes. The context of the user’s need for organization is extremely important, and the product that will actually help this person is the one that addresses their context for needing help learning how to organize and maintain that organization despite a hectic lifestyle.

Companies developing products for users have traditionally spent a majority of their research efforts in learning about their user base, but companies that focus more on the jobs to be done of their users rather than their personal characteristics are able to come up with innovative solutions to serve their customers best. However, a potential flaw of the Jobs to Be Done framework is that users may get reduced to only their jobs and context. It is important to balance consideration of a user’s jobs and personal characteristics to come up with a product that achieves user goals in the best way possible. In the case of the decorative boxes, they might serve the needs of a homeowner who is confident in their organization methods and who stays on top of their busy lifestyle. However, if the box producer does not know that their user base consists primarily of moms with young children, they might not know that moms will skip past boxes with sharp corners and edges to ensure their house is safe for toddlers. I think the best way to design a product or service is to not only consider the underlying jobs to be done, but to pair that information with the user research that has been gathered. This way, the resulting product will fit seamlessly into the user’s life, and will motivate the user to continue to engage with the product or company.

Amy Zasadzinski