Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) theory is a customer-centered framework that focuses on understanding the underlying goals people are trying to achieve when they use a product or service. Instead of viewing customers through demographic categories such as age, location, or income, JTBD examines the progress people are trying to make in specific situations. The theory suggests that customers "hire" products and services to help them complete a particular task or solve a problem. In experience design, this approach helps organizations move beyond features and functionality to identify what truly matters to users. By understanding the job customers need done, designers can create experiences that align more closely with real-world motivations, frustrations, and desired outcomes. The result is often a more intuitive, useful, and engaging customer experience that addresses actual needs rather than assumptions.
Jobs-to-be-done theory and experience design
Many focus on their immediate competitors and not on the products and services which customers actually see as alternatives - Philip Morton investigates.
A business's competitors are not just other similar companies. They can also be competing with the products and services which customers actually see as alternatives.
One idea of why this happens, and how to avoid doing the same, is the ‘jobs-to-be-done’ theory. This school of thought was developed by Clay Christensen of Harvard Business School and Bob Moesta of the ReWired Group. The theory is popular amongst those working in business strategy and product innovation, but I think it applies equally well in the field of experience design.
Jobs in people’s lives
Put in its simplest form, jobs-to-be-done theory asks the question: “for what job are people hiring a product or service to do?”
This is useful for two reasons:
It helps us to understand what causes people to use something (or not).
It forces us to think about competition at a higher level.
One of the most succinct examples of this thinking comes from Theodore Levitt: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”
Organisations need to align themselves around the jobs customers have in their lives (the quarter-inch hole), not the products that they’ve always sold (the quarter-inch drills).
Jobs-to-be-done in the photography business
Consider the job of capturing and sharing memories. Since man first walked the earth, we have been recording moments in our lives for posterity. For thousands of years, people had no easy way to do this unless they were a skilled artisan, were wealthy enough to hire one, or had time to learn their craft.
When Kodak made photography accessible to a mass market, that all changed. For the last 100 years, people have hired the camera to do this job because it offers a cheap, reliable and accurate way to capture and share memories.
That’s beginning to change though. The most popular devices on photo-sharing website Flickr is now smartphones, while point-and-shoot camera sales are tumbling. This isn’t because people have stopped wanting to capture and share memories, but that they’re hiring something different to do it.
Smartphones may not take the best photos, but people always have them on their person and they make sharing photos with friends easy.
Camera manufacturers like Canon and Nikon have been concentrating on improving the quality of the image capture, missing out on the sharing part of the job. Thus even though smartphones take comparatively poor images, they’re preferred over cameras because they better serve the job of capturing and sharing memories.
Jobs-to-be done in financial services
Of course this isn’t the only industry in which organisations focus too much on one-upping each other’s products, only to miss the wider picture. In financial services, one of the jobs that people have in their lives is to grow their money, which they typically do by saving or investing.
Yet in our research, one of the most common things we find is that consumers don’t understand investments. As a result, they often don’t think of them as something which can be hired for the job of growing their money. All too often they choose savings or property instead, where growth doesn’t always beat inflation.
Banks spend a lot of resources on improving their investment propositions and services, but fail to address this lack of consideration. Instead of simply focusing on creating the best fund-trading platforms and having the lowest fees, organisations should seek to educate consumers and create products which cater for those with little investments knowledge.
By better serving the underlying job-to-be-done, banks will be able to increase their investments earnings. If they continue as they are, they’ll leave the door open to competitors to fill the gap.
Putting it into practice
The first step to putting this theory into practice is to identify customers’ jobs-to-be-done by conducting research or by reviewing existing insight. From there you can begin to understand what customers see as valuable for those jobs-to-be-done and what the alternatives to your product are. These insights can then form a basis to further explore customer needs and motivations for both tactical and strategic work.
Jobs To Be Done - FAQs
One of the most valuable aspects of JTBD theory is its ability to redefine how organizations think about competition. Traditional market analysis often focuses on direct competitors offering similar products or services. However, JTBD encourages businesses to look at all alternatives customers might use to accomplish the same goal. For example, a customer trying to "capture and share memories" may choose a smartphone, a digital camera, social media platform, or cloud storage service. These solutions may seem unrelated, but they all compete to fulfill the same job. By understanding the job rather than the product category, businesses gain a broader and more realistic view of the competitive landscape. This perspective helps companies anticipate market disruption, identify innovation opportunities, and design experiences that better satisfy customer objectives.
Demographic data can provide useful information about customer groups, but it often fails to explain why people make decisions. Two customers with similar ages, incomes, and locations may have entirely different motivations for choosing a product or service. JTBD focuses on the circumstances, goals, and challenges that drive behavior, offering deeper insights into decision-making. Understanding customer jobs allows organizations to uncover unmet needs and design solutions that address specific pain points. This approach can reveal opportunities that might be invisible when looking solely at demographic information. By focusing on the problem customers are trying to solve, businesses can create products and experiences that are more relevant, memorable, and valuable to the people they serve.
Businesses can apply JTBD theory by conducting research that explores customer goals, motivations, and decision-making processes. Instead of asking customers whether they like a product feature, organizations investigate the context in which customers seek solutions and what success looks like from their perspective. These insights can be used to improve customer journeys, optimize digital experiences, create more effective messaging, and prioritize product development efforts. JTBD also helps teams align around customer outcomes rather than internal assumptions. As a result, organizations can design experiences that reduce friction, improve satisfaction, and increase customer loyalty by helping users accomplish what they truly set out to do.
JTBD plays a critical role in innovation because it shifts attention away from existing products and toward customer needs that remain consistent over time. Technologies may evolve, but the underlying jobs people need to accomplish often remain similar. For example, customers have always wanted to communicate, learn, shop, and share experiences. The tools have changed, but the core needs remain. By focusing on customer jobs, organizations can identify gaps in the market and create solutions that better address emerging needs. This perspective reduces the risk of developing features nobody wants and increases the likelihood of delivering meaningful innovations. In product development, JTBD provides a strategic framework that supports customer-centric decision-making throughout the design process.
Digital transformation efforts often fail when organizations focus too heavily on technology and not enough on customer needs. JTBD helps ensure that digital initiatives are grounded in the outcomes customers are trying to achieve. Rather than implementing technology for its own sake, companies can use JTBD insights to prioritize investments that create genuine value. The framework helps organizations simplify customer journeys, improve usability, and develop solutions that support real-life goals. It also enables cross-functional teams to align around a shared understanding of customer success. As businesses continue to evolve their digital experiences, JTBD provides a powerful foundation for creating products and services that remain relevant, competitive, and customer-focused.