A detectives primer on investigating Jobs-to-be-Done

Detectives build stories from evidence.

Detectives build their stories around a framework. This framework asks, and seeks to answer, the questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how.

UX and market researchers also have to build stories.

The framework they use to build stories is called Jobs-to-be-Done.

Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) is a theory of consumer action. It focuses on the progress that the customer is trying to make in a given circumstance — what a specific customer hopes to accomplish. When a customer uses a product, they “hire” that product to get a specific “job” done.

To build a story of consumer actions around JTBD, researchers can use the same questions detectives use to solve crimes.

• Who? Who is the person of interest in our story? This is the person who will be “hiring” a product.
• What? What is the person of interest trying to accomplish?
• When? When provides contextual background for the story. When is the person of interest trying to accomplish something? Is there a specific time of day or month of the year?
• Where? Where provides contextual background for the story. Where is the person of interest located when trying to accomplish something?
• Why? This is intent. Intent explains “why” someone did what they did, i.e. it is the mental aspect behind an action. Understanding why customers buy a product or service is important if a company wants to build things of value for its customers.
• How? What is the process or procedure that the person of interest follows to get the job done?

UX and market researchers have a lot in common with detectives. They both have to ask questions to build a likely explanation for a phenomenon.

Asking better questions becomes easier when you are equipped with a framework to guide those questions.

This primer is that framework.

This post was created with Typeshare