My take on Jobs to be done Methodology [JTBD]

A method to making valuable, desirable and viable products

Recently there has been a growing interest in jobs to be done methodology. The JTBD method was the foundation for my own methodology that I have been employing and evolving in my design practice for the better part of a decade.

I have been asked a few times recently to describe how I utilise JTBD and how it can be leveraged to create beautiful engaging customer experiences.

I decided that it would be a great topic to write about and I thought I would immortalise my current interpretation of it in a post. Just so future Eugene can look back, shake my head, cringe and think how on earth could I have written that because as we all know the landscape can change fast and frequently.

So take what you will from this and always remember that these are revolutionary times and what may work today might not tomorrow.

EJTBD [Emotional Jobs To Be Done]

When it comes to methodologies, don’t stress too much about doing it 'by the book'. I find that everyone seems to have a differing interpretation and I am constantly adapting and improving my own interpretation. I try to encourage my clients and colleges to take a chance at expanding or customising their process to better adhere to the diverse and unique challenges that we face. The key to adapting or experimenting with a process is ensuring the value of the addition far outweighs the negate affordance the new complexity has on the project.

Making products regardless of being physical or digital requires an orchestra of elements, often needing to harmonise and coordinate, progressing along a trajectory that adheres to a predetermined road map or general plan.

It can all be very confusing...

Confusion can propagate across a project and is the symptom of over-complicated methodologies and conflicting views. What makes this even more challenging is there is quite often multiple views that are correct all bidding for attention at the same time.

Over complication and confusion on how to approach product design is the most common challenge, we face as technology creators. The exact challenges will vary across disciplines but having a clear method and process to follow can work wonders to unlock latent innovation and creativity that often sets a product apart.

A complex and strenuous process that requires endless chains of meeting and multiple layers of confirmation will have too many moving parts, resulting in elements being far too detached from your user's desires and objectives.

In an attempt to combat the continued over-complication of product design I have come up with a methodology that can act as a generic framework. This framework should simplify the product design and development process ensuring that every choice that is made by a team is directly tied to a user and their desired objective.

The method is guided by two governing principles. And with these two principle, we can bring the emotional connection between your user and the technology to the forefront of the teams minds.

1. The understanding that things that 'look better, work better' described brilliantly in Don Norman book ‘Emotional Design’

2. The leveraging of freeform creative thought and design thinking practice explained in the Book ‘Change by design’ by Tim Brown. 

To put My Emotional Jobs Methodology in the simplest form I have broken it into three important stages…

1. Describe [Objectives] and prioritise them
2. Describe the individual [Jobs] within each Objective
3. Translate each job to a users interaction

There is a lot of creative work that goes into each of these steps and there is definitely a risk of oversimplifying. That being said these three simple activities allow us to focus our attention and tie a business objective directly to an interaction with a human. 

Let's break down the three stages using an imaginary case study. 

Let's pretend that we want to create a new mobile application that empowers users to order their favourite type of coffee from the nearest local coffee shop. 

Generally speaking, the very first step would be a validation exercise to confirm that there is in-fact humans that have a desire for this new technology. There is a multitude of methods to confirm and validate a users desire. I call this [Validation Testing] and I will go into detail on types of testing in another article. 

Describe Objectives

[Objectives] are the over aching tasks, it's a good idea that at least a few are directly tied to business objectives. This can help the new product retain a focus on business objectives. This said, there is a lot of value in having objectives that entice or play on other human traits such a novelty, gamification and addiction.

In this first stage, these objectives can become more freeform and innovative. Spending time as a team brainstorming all the possibilities that could be added to the initial objective is a fun and expressive exercise and one of my personal favourites.

Let's get the party started with a freeform creative brainstorming session. Spending time as a team thinking of all the possibilities that could be added to the initial objective or that surround it. In general, this is a fun and expressive exercise with no wrong answers. Brainstorming is an art form and there are many ways to approach it and there is significantly more to it than you might first think.

There is enough info surrounding brainstorming for a dedicated article so I won't go into details now. What I will say, however, like a lot of things, the best way to learn what works for you and your team is to just jump right in.

Let's imagine we have had our brainstorming session and have decided on 6 main objectives. Before continuing, have a go as a team, to loosely organise the Objectives into a prioritised list. I suggest Tim Browns ‘Butterfly wall’ method as it is easy and follows from brainstorming elegantly.

Here is what our imaginary prioritised list of Objectives look like.

Objectives

1. Order a coffee for pick up
2. Identify and pick up an ordered coffee
3. Contact the cafe
4. Add friends to my friend list
5. Send a friend a coupon code
6. Write a review for a coffee
7. Buy 10 coffees for a discount 

Describe the Jobs

[A Job] is a single task or step that a user does, generally in a particular sequential order, to achieve an objective. 

Let's start with the first objective 'Order a coffee for pick up’. So in order for a user to achieve this objective, they must first complete this list of Jobs

Jobs Included in the Order a coffee for pick up objective

1. Sign in to the app
2. Select the type of coffee
3. Choose extras
4. Enter payment details
5. Wait for the confirmation of my order
6. Receive confirmation of my order
7. Identify where I will need to pick up my coffee
8. Walk to the correct cafe
9. Pick up the coffee
10. Receive my receipt 
11. Drink the coffee
12. review the cafe

The main purpose of the exercise is building an understanding of the relationship between a user and the function of the product by expressing the single task they are attempting to achieve. These tasks can be prioritized by how often and how important they are but will most likely need to be performed in a particular order. These priorities then directly translate to how the function is built into an interface.

It gets particularly interesting when the jobs no longer hold a direct relationship with the app, like picking the items of the shelf, selecting a packaging type, sticking a label on a box or something more customized like tying a bow on a package. I like including these jobs too, as often they can be represented with a screen or an interface element, for instance, if you could imagine when its time to pick up your coffee, the screen could display a component with the instructions on how to navigate to the coffee shop. The action of walking to the shop although not a direct element of the app still holds relevance as a job required to complete the objective.  

The trick to jobs is distilling each action down to a single task and expressing it in its simplest most human form.

The other tool we have to describe jobs is our language, I have tried many different ways of describing jobs and I found that sometimes deliberately leaving them as natural and human as possible ends up translating to a design that is also both natural and human. The language will also need to be as consistent as possible as there will be common components that can serve multiple purposes like a 'Create' Button.

Translate to a concept

I cannot stress enough that this is another free form stage. We need to approach this with the intention of experimenting with the boundary of our objectives. I like to remind my self that innovation can happen at any stage of the process and you 'Can't get the product without the process'.

Throughout the entire process open as many opportunities for innovation as this will only further promote more innovative ideas.

In order to know what to design first, I would start by assigning two values to each job.

1. The frequency of the job 0-5 (0 being never used, 5 being used every time)

2. The importance of job 0-5 to the objective (0 offers no value, 5 can't live without)

Let's take ‘Contact cafe’ This might only happen once every three orders so let's assign a score of 2 for the first criteria.

The capability of having a method to contact a cafe, however, is quite important so I would potentially assign a score of 4 to bring the job score to (6).

These scores can then become the basis for creating the product and as a designer looking at conception and designing product concepts I now have real tangible weights to prioritize elements or make decisions on precedence and layout.

Generally speaking with experience and using an 'on the spot iteration design process' it's not quite as formal, everything can be massaged and flexed but the objectives, thee jobs, and the scores are something real and forms a basic framework that feeds decisions in the design process.

Thank you for sticking with me. But this should give a bit of an insight into my interpretation of the JTBD methodology. The next phase would be testing the concept and feeding the results back into the process.

Testing is such an important and involved step that I will separate into a different article.

Hopefully, this has described the methods and the thought that goes into creating delightfully interactions and hopefully will result in a desirable, viable and feasible product. 

?MVP