itsual JTBD Research
Overview
Jobs-to-be-Done research focuses on the functional, emotional, and social progress people seek when they “hire” a product or solution in a context.
When to Use
- Product strategy and roadmap framing
- Messaging and positioning grounded in jobs
- Switching and adoption research
- Innovating beyond feature comparison
Core Practices
- Interview around recent real choices and timelines
- Map forces: push of the old, pull of the new, habits, anxieties
- Distinguish job (progress) from solution (product)
- Document circumstances and success criteria in the customer’s language
- Prioritize jobs by importance and dissatisfaction where measured
- Translate jobs into product and messaging implications
Principles
- People buy progress, not products
- Hypothetical “would you use” is weaker than reconstruction of real hires
- Jobs are stable relative to solutions
- Emotional and social jobs are real, not soft add-ons
Verification
- Insights are grounded in real choice narratives
- Jobs are stated as progress, not feature wishlists
- Implications for product/messaging are explicit