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When jobs to be done and user personas join forces
The synergy of two user-centered approaches
Jobs to be Done (JTBD) is a powerful framework for understanding the motivations behind why people purchase or use products or services. Essentially, it focuses on the “job” that customers are hiring a product or service to do for them. By applying the Jobs to be Done framework to understand users’ needs, you can gain valuable insights that influence the design and development of products and services, and tailor them to meet those needs effectively.
Why can’t I just use personas?
Of course you can. But the deal is, personas are rather static representations of your users or customers, which enable you to divide them into segments. Therefore, you need to make sure you include only relevant information, which can influence your design decision.
A persona depicts what you need to know about a typical end user of your product to make informed design decisions. (Intercom on Jobs to be Done)
Explore the pain points and gains: what challenges do users encounter while trying to achieve their goal? What are their frustrations?
A smartly made personas can summarise motivations and needs of your users, they usually lack in context and situations.
On the contrast, JTBD focuses on the multidimensional “Why” when analysing customers’s need to “hire” a product or service to get a job done. They can provide more actionable insights into functional, emotional, and social needs and motivations of your customer.
When applying JTBD and Personas to understand users’ needs, this is a possible approach you can follow:
Identify the “Job”:
Start by identifying the core functional job that the user will try to accomplish by means of your product. Each product has a core functional job — “the stable…
