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The JTBD Special 👩‍💼🚀

We’ve progressed more in the last 200 years than in all of History.

Progress is the value we derive from the audacity and methods for questioning ourselves, as well as the theories that allow you to replicate and build upon that value.

“The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point, either exactly or approximately, a message selected at another point.” – Claude E. Shannon

Shannon’s Information Theory is an example of how much value you can derive from a single theory. Initially aimed at ensuring the reproducibility of digital information, ended up helping us progress in space exploration, internet, ecology, and much more.

This relates to JTBD in the sense that it too has tremendous potential for Product Design as a whole, not just in digital – e.g. retail, food, travel, more. Additionally, awareness and adoption of JTBD theory doesn’t yet reach the level of User Stories or Personas, or which JTBD methods apply to Metrics, Copyrighting, Marketing, or even Product Management.

The slow uptake in JTBD adoption might be due to what I’ve mention above. Additionally, strategy isn't as crucial when paid apps survive on novelty alone. Free apps provide enough ad reach to compensate for poor value and ad targeting. A failed app isn’t as consequential as a failed medical treatment, and thus cultural inertia lives on.

So this is the reasoning for this week’s focus on JTBD, having used it for 3 years for Product Management, User Research, as well as Ideation, I truly believe in its value and making it understandable for others.

In this issue I’ve included comment on JTBD methods for Copyrighting and Metrics, enjoy and I welcome our feedback! 🙌

 

Happenings

 

Design



JTBD and Copyrighting 👩‍💼✒️

Efficient copyrighting is clear and relatable: not only you need to share your customer’s language, you also need to send them the right message.

Shared Language

User interviews are a good way to discover how your customers may describe the situation they’re in and the outcome they want to achieve, and their understanding of your own jargon and processes (more on JTBD interviews).

This “JTBD Camera (purchase) Interview" has a good example: we hear the customer describing the photography term “ISO” simply as something that “made the picture brighter” (an outcome!).

And in “The Magic Formula to Describe a Product in one Sentence” a “You do X and Y happens” formula is used by funders to describe how things work: Facebook - “Something where you can type someone’s name and find out a bunch of information about them.”; Uber - “You push a button and in five minutes a Mercedes picks you up and takes you where you want to go.”. In user interviews, I usually ask “How would you describe it to a friend” for learning how people perceive the process/feature to work.

The Right Message

So given we’ve got the customer’s language, we can use what we learn about the user’s context and desired outcome to craft an efficient copyright e.g. assuming Intercom has captured the right context (difficult to use tools) and outcome (personalized customer communication): “Communicating with customers shouldn’t be this hard, with Intercom it’s simple, personal, and fun for everyone”; compare this to: “Service Cloud Einstein gives you faster, smarter customer service.” – which says nothing about simplicity, or personalization, and includes product name jargon.

Aside: In “People Who Speak the Right Language Win”, Rafal also mentions how the jargon-free customer language brings clarity to your team as an added bonus.

 

Research

Stats

 

Strategy


And Finally…