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Plate RES·018 · Research methodGrid G2 · Rev. 2026-08-14

Jobs to Be Done

Framing user needs as the progress someone is trying to make, which separates the need from any particular solution.

Research methodCraft conventionIntermediate

Definition

Jobs to Be Done frames demand around the progress a person is trying to make in a circumstance, rather than around demographics or features. It is a framing device with several competing formalisations rather than a single defined method.

Craft convention. True because the industry converged on it. Breaking it costs familiarity, not correctness.

On this plate
  1. 1Definition
  2. 2What the framing is good for
  3. 3Getting to a job statement
  4. 4In practice
  5. 5Commonly confused with
  6. 6Local chart
  7. 7Sources
  8. 8Continue from here

Reach for this when

  • Defining what to build.
  • Understanding why people switched to or from a product.
  • Escaping feature-parity thinking.
  • Demographic segments have stopped explaining who buys and who leaves.

Common mistakes

  • Treating job stories as a substitute for research.
  • Mixing the two traditions without noticing.
  • Jobs written so abstractly they cannot inform a decision.
  • Writing a job statement so abstract that it would fit any product in the category.

What the framing is good for

  • Separating the underlying need from the current solution, which opens the design space.
  • Identifying real competitors, which are often not products in your category at all.
  • Writing job stories: when [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome].
  • Understanding switching triggers through interviews about a recent purchase or adoption.

Getting to a job statement

  1. 1

    Interview people who switched recently

    Both towards you and away from you. Switching is when the reasoning is still recoverable.

  2. 2

    Reconstruct the timeline

    First thought, passive looking, active looking, deciding, buying. Each has a different trigger and a different anxiety.

  3. 3

    Find the push and the pull

    What made the old way intolerable, and what made the new one attractive. Both have to be present for a switch to happen.

  4. 4

    Name the anxieties and the habits

    What made them hesitate, and what they were giving up. These are usually what a product has to defuse rather than out-feature.

  5. 5

    Write the job without your product in it

    If the statement only makes sense as a description of what you already built, it is a feature list wearing a costume.

In practice

  1. i.

    The competitor that was a spreadsheet

    Framing

    Asked what they used before, most customers named no product at all. The alternative being hired was a spreadsheet and a reminder, which set the bar the product actually had to clear.

Commonly confused with

Close neighbours that get substituted for each other. The difference is stated first, then the condition that picks one over the other.

vs.

Persona

Template

A research-grounded description of a user type, built around goals and behaviour.

Key difference

A persona describes who someone is, as a pattern found in research. A job describes the progress they are trying to make, independent of who they are. Two very different people can share a job, and one person has different jobs on different days.

Use Jobs to Be Done when

  • The question is what the product is hired to do.
  • Demographics have stopped explaining the behaviour you see.
  • You want a frame that survives a change of audience.

Use Persona when

  • The team needs a shared, memorable picture of who this is for.
  • Differences between groups genuinely change the design.
  • It is grounded in data, not invented with a stock photograph.

Learn about Persona

Local chart

RES·018 · Region IV · Grid G2

This entry and the entries it is stated to connect with. Each line is labelled with what the connection means.

Mental ModelsMOD·001 · PRINCIPLES BEHIND THISProduct ThinkingMOD·002 · PRINCIPLES BEHIND THISDesign BriefTPL·010 · OFTEN USED WITHInterview GuideTPL·002 · OFTEN USED WITHProduct SpecificationTPL·011 · OFTEN USED WITHPersonaTPL·003 · COMMONLY CONFUSED WITHDouble DiamondTERM·110 · SHORT DEFINITIONJobs to Be DoneTERM·093 · SHORT DEFINITIONPersonaTERM·116 · SHORT DEFINITIONResearch SynthesisRES·014 · RELATED CONCEPTUser InterviewsRES·003 · RELATED CONCEPTDiscoveryFLOW·004 · RELATED CONCEPT

Sources

Where a source establishes something narrower than the popular reading of it, the note says so.

  1. [1]

    Competing Against Luck

    C. Christensen, T. Hall, K. Dillon and D. Duncan, HarperBusiness, 2016

  2. [2]

    Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice

    A. Ulwick, Idea Bite Press, 2016

Continue from here

Each link says what the connection is, so you can tell a principle from an alternative from a thing people mix this up with.

Principles behind this

The reasoning this solution is an application of.

Often used with

These usually appear in the same screen or the same decision.

Short definition

The one-paragraph version, for when that is all you need.

Related concept

Connected closely enough to change how you apply this.