Practical Applications of JTBD: A Conversation with Jake Mitchell

JTBD is very powerful at pinpointing opportunities for innovation. But it doesn’t have to entail a big, heavy upfront process. Applying “jobs thinking” — an explicit shift away from your own solution — can lead to incremental improvements that have a big impact.

That’s why I like the work of Jake Mitchell, a Product Design Manager at DocuSign. He’s been using JTBD in very practical ways to help bring focus and alignment to teamwork. Jake even contributed a case study to The JTBD Playbook highlighting his success with the framework at CarMax, where he previously worked.

I caught up with Jake for an interview to learn about his experiences and get his real-world take on JTBD.

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JIM: When and how did you get into JTBD?

JAKE: I wish I could remember the very first piece of content where I learned about JTBD, but I do remember coming across Clayton Christensen’s “milkshake lecture” and being blown away by the concept. The way he described it was so simple, but also transformational in the way that I had been approaching solving customer problems. Once I watched that video and read a few more articles, I started seeing everything in the frame of JTBD.

So many problems suddenly got a lot clearer when I asked myself “What’s the job to be done here? What problem do customers have in their lives, and why would customers choose us to solve it for them?”

JIM: The “milkshake story” is how a lot of us got into JTBD! It’s all about a mindset shift.

I recall a story you told on stage at the UX Strat conference a few years — where you and I met — about how your team at CarMax used JTBD to help with the design of that online service. Can you summarize what the team did and how JTBD brought clarity to your work?

JAKE: At CarMax, I was focused on trying to improve the customer’s experience in shopping for a car online. My team had gathered all of these insights on how the current experience of how people were shopping for cars online was difficult, cumbersome, and ultimately frustrating. I would go to CarMax stores, and hear from Sales Consultants how often people would think they found the perfect car online, then be disappointed when they saw it in person.

So my team and I had spent a lot of time thinking we just needed to improve the quality of photos of cars for sale. Our assumption was that the more we invested in improving the photo technology and environment, car sales would improve.

However, it turned out that wasn’t always the case. Photo quality was a factor, but it wasn’t seeming to move the needle as much as we had hoped. But what really changed the whole way we approached the problem is when I started asking “what’s the job to be done here? Why are car shoppers ‘hiring’ these photos?.” It was a simple question, but it turned the way we were doing things on their head.

Once we started talking to customers and getting to the reason why they were looking at photos, we got a lot more insight. There were two big takeaways that led to a breakthrough on why shoppers hire photos:

• First, to get a sense of the space of the car, basically whether it would be big enough for their life.
• Next, they wanted to confirm the car had the features that mattered to them. It wasn’t enough for people to see in the list of features that the car came with bluetooth, they needed to see that “answer phone” icon on the steering wheel to confirm the car really had that.

With that, we realized we had discovered the underlying jobs that photos were serving. And with that information, we realized we could build solutions that served those critical jobs way better.

For the feature confirmation job, we built a “feature gallery” that pointed out what features were in photos, that way car shoppers wouldn’t have to go digging through the photo gallery to try to find that one photo in the bunch that shows hands-free calling. For giving a better sense of the space of the car, we launched the 360° photography picture feature, which showed a huge amount of engagement and a lift in car sales.

JIM: Great, practical story! So, how did the team react to bringing JTBD into the project? What was the effect on decision-making and on the overall team dynamics?

JAKE: Once we realized the biggest opportunity was just a few jobs, it immensely helped the team focus on delivering solutions that would be actually valuable to both the customer and the business. Like a lot of product teams, we had plenty of stakeholders and decision-makers that had their own perspectives on what was the most important thing we were doing.

But JTBD helped us realign and draw a clear line between what kind of business outcome we were trying to create, the customer job we knew needed to be solved, and the solutions we were testing to understand would work the best.

JIM: Focus and alignment — good stuff. But it might not have been a straight line to success. What hurdles did you face getting to that point with the team at CarFax?

JAKE: The biggest hurdle was influencing and persuading stakeholders that this was the direction that made the most sense. It was one thing to tell stakeholders that we were re-orienting towards the JTBD that customers are trying to fulfill, it’s another to get them to believe that it’s the best decision. The great thing about JTBD style thinking is that you can clearly demonstrate the value with research and experimentation.

To help show how important this was to our customer base, I conducted a series of tests on usertesting.com where we had car shoppers interact with a prototype of a car page with a 360 photo. Inevitably, the testers would discover the 360° photograph experience and remark on how much they loved it, totally unprompted. We never had anything that prompted such a strong response before.

I made a “highlight reel” where I edited together several clips of people’s strong reactions, then started showing that to stakeholders that were still skeptical about the entire initiative. Once they saw that, they were fully bought in.

JIM: There’s nothing like direct feedback from customers to help make your case. Great work. I understand you continue to use JTBD in your current role. How have you been leveraging JTBD and what have been some of the impacts?

JAKE: Since first learning about JTBD a few years ago, I’ve taken on new opportunities and learned a lot more about the theory and how it can be applied. In my current role at DocuSign, I’ve been working with a team of UX researchers and designers to help use job maps to define where the best opportunities exist in the field of creating and managing agreements. JTBD has been immensely useful, as it helps teams build clarity and a shared language on the needs of the user.

JIM: In practical terms, how does JTBD fit in with other methods your team may already be using, such as design thinking, agile, etc.? Does it replace other approaches you’re using or complement them?

JAKE: I’ve found that JTBD is a supplement to other techniques that help complete the bigger picture and gain a better overall understanding of what value the team is trying to generate with their solution. At DocuSign, we have a working group that’s focused on building job maps and articulating customer outcomes, while simultaneously there are researchers and designers using other methodologies to gain insight into specific discovery questions. When all of these methods are combined, we get a fuller sense of what areas we need to prioritize over others.

JIM: Great to hear that. I’m also wondering about interfacing with other teams outside of your department. Have you used JTBD findings and insights to collaborate with, say, Marketing or Sales or other groups?

JAKE: Yes, what’s great about JTBD is that it helps build common ground between marketing and sales organizations with Product. At DocuSign, we presented one of our job maps to a marketing team, and they loved it so much that they started defining “top of funnel” journeys based on the job map.

So before, they were trying to measure success by whether or not a user clicked a button, but since job maps define how the customer measures success, they shifted their metrics to instead look for signals that demonstrated they were meeting the customer’s outcome. Overall, job maps can be a powerful tool because it helps teams understand what outcomes to invest more towards.

JIM: Thanks, Jake!