Unlocking Innovation with Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) and Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI)
In today’s fast-paced digital world, truly understanding your users’ needs is the secret sauce to driving innovation. Enter Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) and Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) two powerful frameworks that can help product teams and designers create experiences that don’t just meet expectations but exceed them. Let’s dive into how these approaches can be seamlessly integrated into your design process, backed by real-world examples and best practices.
The Designer: More Than Just Pixels and Prototypes
As a designer, you’re not just a creator of pretty screens; you’re a visionary, shaping the very direction of the products you work on. Your role involves more than just crafting interfaces, you’re influencing the entire product strategy. This means proposing new initiatives, introducing innovative frameworks, and shaping the product roadmap. At JET, where I’ve had the chance to work across various teams, I’ve seen firsthand how much impact design can have on a product’s success.
One key methodology we use at JET is the Double Diamond process, a design thinking framework that emphasises the iterative nature of product design. It’s not a straight line from start to finish; instead, you might bounce back and forth between phases as new insights pop up. The Double Diamond process usually involves four stages:
Discovering and Understanding: Identifying the problems and opportunities.
Defining the Problem: Refining and focusing on the core issues.
Ideation: Generating and exploring potential solutions.
Implementation: Prototyping and testing solutions.
For this article, we’ll focuss on the first two stages - Product Discovery. This is where designers roll up their sleeves to truly understand user problems and needs before crafting the best solutions.
Product Discovery: The Treasure Hunt for User Insights
Product discovery is like a treasure hunt, it’s all about digging deep to uncover the real problems and needs of your users. There are a variety of methods and frameworks you can use in this phase, ranging from qualitative to quantitative approaches:
Qualitative Methods: These include methods such as customer interviews, contextual inquiries, diary studies anf many more which give you a rich, nuanced understanding of user behaviors and motivations.
Quantitative Methods: Include methods like surveys, questionnaires, and product data to help validate hypotheses and prioritise features based on user feedback.
JTBD and ODI: Your Secret Weapons for Product Discovery
JTBD and ODI are like your trusty compass and map on this treasure hunt. They guide you to the hidden gems, those deep, often unspoken user needs that are the key to true innovation.
What is Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD)?
Think of JTBD like this: Imagine you’re throwing a pizza party, but your oven decides to take the day off. You’re not concerned about the oven; you’re focused on the delicious, perfectly crispy pizza crust you promised your friends. JTBD is all about understanding that goal, what your users really want to achieve, not just the tools they use to get there.
Instead of getting bogged down in how your product fits into the user’s life, JTBD dives deeper into the real objectives driving their behavior. For example, when someone orders food to take away, it’s not just about filling their stomach. They might be after convenience, trying to satisfy a specific craving, or simply avoiding another kitchen disaster. JTBD helps you uncover these motivations, giving you a golden ticket to innovation.
Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI)
Once you’ve got those user motivations locked down, ODI is how you turn those insights into action. ODI takes what you’ve learned from JTBD and translates it into strategies that you can actually use to create or refine products. By identifying “desired outcomes”, specific, measurable goals users want to achieve you can tailor your offerings to hit the mark every time.
For instance, in the world of takeaway food, ODI would help you optimise the entire process, from planning and choosing a place to ordering and enjoying the meal. By understanding the emotional, social, and functional needs at each stage, you can develop solutions that enhance the overall experience and keep users coming back for more.
Real-World Application
At JET, we’ve applied the JTBD approach to explore new business opportunities within the food market. Our target JTBD was not just about delivering food online, a market we’ve been in for years, but expanding our exploration to other aspects of the food industry.
Through research, we’ve identified two main types of users:
The Problem Solver: This person is all about instant gratification. Hungry now? They want food right now.
The Explorer: This user is on a culinary adventure, whether it’s for a celebration or just trying something new.
To get inside the heads of these users, we conducted a diary study with participants in the UK and the Netherlands. By capturing their food-related journeys via WhatsApp, we were able to extract Job Steps and Desired Outcome Statements that provided us with the insights we needed to innovate.
The Opportunity Job Map: Your Blueprint for Success
The Opportunity Job Map is your trusty blueprint for breaking down a “job” into its key stages and desired outcomes. Take the task of “getting food to takeaway,” for example. The map helps you identify specific steps like planning, visiting the outlet, considering the menu, purchasing, and finally, consuming the food. At each stage, the map outlines what users really want to achieve, making it easier to design solutions that truly meet their needs.
Outcome statements extracted within the Planning stage
For example:
Planning: Users want to minimise the effort required to decide what to eat after a long day.
Visiting the Outlet: They want to quickly find nearby outlets without breaking a sweat.
Purchasing: They want to avoid long wait times and feel appreciated for their loyalty.
By focusing on these outcomes, you can innovate in ways that directly address user pain points and significantly boost satisfaction.
Understanding the process
Ready to put JTBD and ODI to work? Here’s your game plan:
Identify the Main Job: Get a clear, big-picture view of the job at hand, like “getting food to takeaway.”
Break It Down: Slice the job into manageable steps, such as planning, ordering, and eating.
Define Desired Outcomes: Ask yourself, “What does the user want to achieve at each step?” and how can these outcomes be measured?
Quantify and Prioritise: Use surveys and research to determine which outcomes matter most and where there’s room for improvement.
Innovate: Take the insights you’ve gathered and use them to create or refine products that truly hit the mark.
Simple Illustration of a Job Map
Conclusion: The JTBD and ODI Advantage
JTBD and ODI are powerful frameworks that allow you to understand customer needs on a deeper level. By focusing on the jobs that customers want to get done and the outcomes they desire, you can innovate more effectively and create products that truly resonate with your audience.
This approach not only drives meaningful innovation but also ensures that the solutions you develop are aligned with what users genuinely value. By adopting JTBD and ODI, you can stay ahead of the competition and deliver products that make a real difference in your customers’ lives.