Case for JTBD Over Personas in Service Design
By Richard Ekelman & Nate Sundberg
When technology started to become a part of our daily lives design underwent a fundamental shift as human-centered practices became the norm. A significant tool, introduced by Alan Cooper, was personas- a simple document that allowed stakeholders and internal teams to build empathy for previously-faceless customers. But in today’s service experience economy, personas are no longer the cure-all for modern empathy building and true co-creation. Enter Jobs To Be Done. JTBD is a more efficient approach to accounting for what people value from a service. I am not suggesting that JTBD is a path to utopia, but personas create problem-solving processes twice removed from reality. Understanding the jobs a service experience must perform to create a value affords us clarity on meeting the real needs of everyone involved. Why? “Jobs” in the JTBD framework are customer and employee focused, and defined as service encounters. Personas consume a significant amount of time and money– making them almost impossible to update– whereas JTBD can be lightweight and continuously adjusted as the service learns more about the people and the value exchange they create.
The practice of creating and designing from personas is an old practice that is handcuffing service design.
Reality Breeds Real Services
If an organization does not understand their employees and the people they serve how can they adequately understand what creates their value exchange?
Much like personas, valid jobs to be done are always an output of triangulated research. However, focusing on the jobs of a service minimizes
Let’s look at mapping — a central component of understanding existing or aspirational services. When mapping services based on the jobs to perform, it’s easier to focus on what is happening to the real people offering and receiving a service experience. This clarity allows the service designers to concentrate on the core service without the distraction of which device they might be
JTBD are more flexible than personas
The cost and energy organizations place on personas precludes them from being easily changed or scrapped altogether. Personas have become a destination. In contrast, Jobs to Be Done are a continually evolving set of design inputs. Services are by their nature changing all the time. Mapping and designing from a JTBD approach
Get comfortable being uncomfortable
Services are never complete. Our processes as service designers should reflect that reality. Personas can allow us to do research, synthesize using our reason and logic and then move into solving problems at a comfortable distance. But in my experience as a consultant and an internal team member, personas often actually take the people you serve out of your process. Using co-creation and focusing on jobs is messier, but JTBD naturally lends itself to prototyping and understanding which aspects of the service experience feel best for the people.
Like any artifact, Jobs to Be Done can become a rabbit hole if we over complicate them. But when used at the right level they can bring the people we serve inside our process. Focusing on the jobs that allow our services to deliver value reliably over time in a way that is both viable for the company and creates a desirable experience for customers is a powerful mechanism with lots of impact potential.
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