It's a no-brainer to say that a business is more successful when it makes stuff that meets their users' needs. That's where User-Centered Design (UCD) comes in, right? But even the best companies struggle to use UCD processes to pinpoint value for their customers. I believe the problem is the word "design". Design is misunderstood and speaks a different language to the rest of the business.
As a UX researcher and massive UCD advocate, Jobs-To-Be-Done has been a revelation when it comes to helping my business focus on their users, mainly because it's not a design tool. Find out how designers, researchers, and PM's can use Jobs-To-Be-Done as a sneaky-wee UCD Trojan horse to unleash user-centered design from the inside
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Well, thanks for the promo for five things. Unexpected promo. Yeah. Thanks so much for coming this morning. It's really appreciated. I'm a massive Turing fanboy. I've been, I think, the past five years. I mean, it's the best tech conference in the UK. Right? Yeah.
So I'm super pleased to have been asked to come along and share my thoughts with all you wonderfully smart people. I've been making websites and products for around twenty years or so, and like probably most folks, I've gone through a few different roles.
I've been a developer, a designer, and now I'm a design researcher. But at the root of everything I've done over this time is one thing, help people do something that they couldn't do before. You know, make it easier and make it easier to understand, make it more affordable.
And jobs to be done is the best framework I've used so far to help me do this. And I think it's best one of the best user centered design tools out there. So I'm gonna take about thirty minutes, although the clock's saying less, to do my best to explain the why, the what, and the how of jobs to be done.
And I realize it's lunch next, so I'm gonna get through this as quickly as possible. So, yeah, as I said, the why, the what, and the how. So why bother with jobs to be done at all when we've got, like, so many frameworks out there already?
What jobs to be done is all about or at least the core concepts and how you can get started with jobs to be done in your day to day work. So this talk is, I suppose, aimed at anyone who thinks the best products put their customers at the center of the design process, but who struggle to persuade either their clients or the business that they work for that this is a good thing.
So as I said, I'm a design researcher. I work for a company right here in Edinburgh called FreeAgent. FreeAgent make accounting software for small businesses. Our mission, I suppose, is to make a very complex domain understandable and accessible to our users. And I like to think that we've helped them, our users do something that they couldn't do before.
We do our very best to help small business owners deal with the gnarly, horrible bits of their business, and we help them get paid by clients whilst feeling less worried about chasing cash. Help them file their tax returns whilst also feeling relaxed about filing on time, as relaxed as you possibly can with tax.
And plan for the near term future and feel confident that they can see any sort of upcoming bumps in the road. So I'm a big fan of user centered design. Was nice to see Connor touch on the importance of user centered design. But if we're honest, I don't think user centered design has made the impact it should.
I'm not sure most businesses understand the value. As a description of what I see a user centered design company, I think a user centered design company is where ideas for new features come via the observation and description of their struggles. A user centered design company celebrates user success, not only shipping updates.
And user centered company routinely checks in with their users amongst other things. And I have a pretty good hunch why user centered design hasn't made the impact it should. I think it's to do with the word design. As you can see very clearly, five arrows, user centered design contains the word design, and I don't think that helps much.
For me, design is about understanding what people need to create value for our customers and our business. But design often makes folks think about, like, nice looking things. I think Connor said I had a little GIF of an artist, so very so design often makes Connor think about nice looking things surface level aesthetic only.
That's kind of where design stops for some people. And in most organizations, design is still seen as a function that makes stuff look great, but not a key contributor to creating business value. And I think design can do more, to be honest. I think design is a key component of how your business creates value, but we struggle to communicate that to business leaders.
So Jobs To Be Done is a user centered design tool. It's a really good one at that. But one that isn't really a design tool in a sense, the sneaky wee guy. It was created in the business school. It was first talked about, I think, contentiously in the Harvard Business Review.
But what I think Jobs does well is that Jobs gives designers a language to talk about business and business folk a language to talk about design. It breaks down silos by focusing on the thing everyone should be focused on, and that's how do we help our customers do a better job.
It's a business tool that focuses on users essentially. And it can help define a business from the perspective of the heart sorry, from the perspective of what's at the heart of every company's success, its ability to create value for customers. If you help your customers be successful on their definition of success, you'll turn customer value into business value.
If you help rid them all of with all those daily niggles, you'll turn customer value into business value. If you help give them superpowers they could have only dreamed of, you'll turn customer value into business value. And focusing on creating value for customers leads to creating value for business, which gives the business more capability of creating value, which in turn creates value for their customers and on and on and on until, like, hopefully, you're a mega unicorn or whatever you desire to be.
But both the business and its customers can grow together. I have gift regret. I'm really sorry. But anyway, we'll deal with it just now. And over the years, I've seen yeah. Just a final point I want to make, and it's about waste minimization.
Over the years, I've seen so much waste products that have taken months and months, but don't make any impact whatsoever. That just feels like really awful for everyone concerned. So I think we've got a duty as an industry to minimize waste as much as possible, ensure that the stuff we make is delivering value for people, to create products that actually help people do something that they couldn't do before.
And I believe a deeper understanding of people, where people struggle day to day can help us deliver more products, products that hopefully won't go to waste. So I think before we start making anything at all, we need to have really clear answers to what can our customers do right now.
If we solve this, what difference will we have made? What's the least we can do to prove we can create value? And know that, like, seems super obvious, but time and time again, these basic questions go unanswered. And I'm not saying jobs to be done is gonna save the world, but I think if we do I think we should do everything we can to make valuable products, ones that hopefully won't go to waste.
So on to the horribly tenuous analogy in this top title. If you're an advocate of user centered design, you can use jobs to be done as a Trojan horse to sneak user centered design into the fortress of business decisions or the idea castle, whatever you want to call it, to make sure that the first place your organization looks when they're planning new features is its users, which I think can only be a good thing.
Before we move on, I just wanna say there's no need to be dogmatic about tools. Jobs to be done isn't a silver bullet. Take from it what you will. Don't throw out sprints, personas, lean alignment diagrams. All of these things are really good for helping solve user problems.
So I'll leave you when we go on the journey through the the what. Sorry. I forgot what was next. The what and the how of jobs to be done. I'll I'll leave you out with a take Bruce Lee's words as as your guidance gifted to me from Rowan, actually.
Absorb what is useful. Reject what is useless. Nag what is essentially your own. So what is jobs to be done? Let's cut to the chase here. I kind of hate to admit it, but IKEA absolutely nailed my job to set up a home office.
I reckon a lot of folk have recently had to do this. I need to set up a home office, like, fairly quickly, a desk, a light, a chair, a couple of plants, a nice rug or something as well. But I need to sort this office out over the weekend.
I was like time limited. So off I went dragging the kids with me, it's a fairly big trip, as in it's gonna take a few hours to get there, get around, and get home again. My and lastly, my office is in the attic, so it's kind of hard to get stuff up there.
And this whole story is my job to be done, and set off set up a home office with all the hoops that I need to jump through. This is the progress I want to make. And I'm in a specific circumstance whilst I'm trying to make that progress, when I need to sort it this weekend, when I'm shopping with the kids and they pay it, when I'm out for a while and likely to get hungry, and when I have an average sized car.
And IKEA deals with that, as you as you probably know. So it allows me to get everything I need there and then. Allow me to put the the youngest kids, at least in a creche, which makes it a bit easier, and they've got a spectacular restaurant if I'm feeling a little bit hungry.
Most importantly, it allows me to get the stuff home that day. And this is the progress. So that is the progress sorry. IKEA understands the progress that I am trying to make. They also understand the circumstances that will affect my ability to get that job done well.
So Clay Christensen in his seminal book, Competing Against Luck, defines jobs as the progress someone is trying to make in a specific circumstance. And progress and circumstance are key to understanding jobs. Together, they help you understand, like, all the experiences you need to create to help a user get a job done well.
So let's dig a little bit deeper into progress. So what I think Jobs does best is reveal the blandingly obvious that people don't want to use your product. They want to get something done. And it's a sobering reminder of something so obvious, but something that's really tricky to remember.
We love our products and assume everyone else does too. But users love what your product does for them, not the product itself. So people don't want to use Facebook. They want to connect with an old friend. Unfortunately, they don't want to use free agent.
They file they want to file their tax. They don't want to eat banana. They want to boost their energy levels while they're on the move. They don't want to watch Netflix. They want to entertain themselves in the evening when they're knackered. And when jobs arise, people want to find products to help them do that job as well as possible.
And I think this simple frame change in frame reminds us to look at the perspective from the users sorry, users' perspective, not our businesses. It moves us away from that mindset constrained by our product. So I think we wanna be asking, like, what what are people trying to get done, not how can our product help you do x?
I think this is best illustrated in a quote everyone has likely heard before. People don't want to buy a quarter inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole. And in a sense, it's, like, not particularly accurate. Unless you're, like, massively into making holes, you probably don't want a quarter inch hole.
Respect to hole makers. Whatever that means. Anyway, the outcome you're likely seeking is to hang a picture or put up a shelf. But what this quote does is to is remind us to focus on the outcome someone is aiming for in jobs lingo, the progress someone is trying to make.
I think I'll prefer the word progress over goals. Goals makes me think of only like an end state and not the process of getting there, whereas progress makes me think of all the bits and things that they'll have to do to reach that end state, which for me is way more helpful when designing products.
So jobs are, as I said, also about circumstance. Understand the circumstance someone is in is well, only half the sorry. Understand the progress someone is in is only half the picture. Progress tells you the end state but not much much about what might affect getting the job done.
And circumstance and jobs, well, it's the context in which someone is performing a job, where they are, what's going on at the time, if they're in a hurry, anything that affects getting that job well performed. For example, the range of solutions you might think when trying to support the job, listen to music, changes significantly depending on the circumstance.
Listen to music when I'm running is very different to listening to music in a car. Your constraints are different. Your listening goals are likely different. The way you evaluate a good solution is definitely different. Then how about when it's cold or when I don't have pockets or when I'm tired?
Each additional piece of information builds a picture of the circumstance, which should help you come up with features that suit the job. So understanding someone's circumstance is fundamental to creating a great solution. Getting griff gift regret. And digging into circumstance also allows us to zoom out, and that sometimes reveals additional services that might be required to get a job done.
Bob West, one of the creators of Jobs to be Done, was tasked with working out why buildings sorry, why apartments weren't selling in downtown Detroit. And the building company had gone through a series of focus groups asking people what they might need from an apartment, but changes on the back of that research didn't improve sales.
So Bob took a different tact. He said, okay. Like, what job are people hiring this apartment to do? And when he dug in and did a few interviews, he found there's a sticking point around the dining room table. And obviously, this dining room table held a lot of sentimental value for people.
But most importantly, this triggered the thought, what will we do with all our stuff that contains so much sentimental value? And this thing this thing allowed them this insight helped them to look at the service from a higher level. They started off offering additional services, a removal service that took everything from their old home to a sorting room near the premises so they could decide what to keep there.
They also provided two year storage free so that people wouldn't have to make these emotional decisions on top of the rigmarole of moving house. So everything was designed to signal to buyers, we get you. We understand the progress you're trying to make and the struggle to get there.
And that's super powerful. Okay. So hopefully, we know what jobs to be done is all about. Yeah? And I bet you're asking, okay, Andy, that's smashing, but how do I use this in my everyday work? So we're gonna look at this through three levels.
So finding jobs, describing jobs, and taking decisions. So when we're finding jobs, switch interviews are my go to technique for hunting jobs. Don't know if anyone's tried those out before, but they're a type of cognitive interview, much like interviews in, like, a detective drama or something, but hopefully a little, like, less detective y.
The aim is to help people remember what happened when they're looking to get a job done. Specifically, switch interviews focus around the time someone switched product. The premise peer being that this is crunch time for people. This is when they evaluate what's a pain about their current way of doing things.
This is when they make trade offs on product features. This is when they choose something that they believe will help them do a job better. These are all the clues you need for product innovation. There are three key points in every switch interview.
A distinct event that pushes them to start passively looking for a new solution. This point is loaded with clues about what's not ideal about their current way of doing things. A distinct event that pushes them into an active actively look for a solution.
And events and decisions around this point contain a ton of information about the breadth of solutions people are researching and what solutions might help them make progress. Lastly, the point of purchase is crunch time. And they've made their selection. They've made all those trade offs to find a product that will hopefully help them get that job done better.
So what trade offs did they make? Is the new way of doing things any better? I don't know. And if so, in what way? It's not moving on, but anyway. Sorry? It's not a big deal. Yeah. So how do we describe jobs? At Freegent, we use a thing called a job card, and it contains six components that hopefully describes the job.
So right up here, we've got the main job, a functional job, which is get paid by client. We have emotional and social jobs as well. And emotional and social jobs are just as important as functional jobs. We have a job performer who's performing this job.
We have the circumstances, which we've talked a ton about, but these provide all the clues for a product team to design something that will fit someone's circumstance. Oh, this monitor's just gone off totally. And finally, we sorry. Thirdly, we have the process as well.
Each job is a high enough level to contain a distinct process. Finally, we have needs here. And needs are quite different in jobs to be done. Needs to describe the actual success criteria someone has when they're using a product. This is how they'll describe getting a job well done.
Yeah. Yeah, just onto the the the final part of how. So sorry, my monitor is just like flashing like nuts. It's all it's all kicking off. Okay. I'll I'll cover this really quickly. But the what we wanna do is pick on a focus area first of the job that we've just described.
And you can simply ask, like, a question. You know, what are customers finding hardest to do? There's more complex ways of doing this, but I think you can start here. Oh. It's okay, man. It's sort of all over the shop, but it's fine.
Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, pick an area that people find hardest to do. Well, then write a job statement. And I love these because you can load them with all the context that you found out in that you found in your interviews. You know, when I'm stressed out at the end of the month trying to make ends meet, I want to see which invoices are late at a glance so I can chase late pairs, and you can load that with all that context.
I think the need to also include needs, so relevant needs from the job card. And these tell a product team what is a good outcome, and they can also be used to measure what a successful solution will be. You can round this off with a design question as well.
This case, how might we help small business owners chase their clients when they're late paying? I don't go. There's stuff moving about. Anyway, let's conclude before we miss lunch. So here's a quick summary. I'd highly recommend you to dig into jobs to be done.
It's not as intimidating as it might first seem. So, you know, why jobs? Key reason. I think it brings design and business together in a really useful way. If you're to take two concepts from what jobs is about, it's progress and circumstance. And if how to use just how to get started with jobs.
Just get started, recommend checking out switch interviews, codify what you've learned in a job card, and then write a job statement to enable a product team to take the next steps. So somehow, we have come to the end of our journey through the why, the what.
Oh, man. Fighting and playing like does look like a game controller, actually. Through the what the how in the why of jobs to be done. Technical hitches. Yeah. I I truly believe that user centered design can start offering more value to business to create customer value to create business value.
Sorry. And I truly think jobs to be done is one of the go to tools and one that you can hopefully use to help your business create value from its users, if that makes sense. If you're into taking your jobs to be done journey further, I highly recommend the following two books.
Competing Against Luck by Clay Christensen gives you a really broad understanding of the theory. And then combine that with jobs to be done playbook by Jim Kalback. That has helped me turn theory into practice. I've put these links and other bits and bobs up on Linktree slash j t b d talk.
If it's oh, it's over there. But, yeah, it's lunchtime, which is great. And, yeah, thanks so much for listening. And, yeah, if you've any questions and see me dotting around, just please, please come and ask. Thank you very much.
