Jobs to Be Done
What is your customer actually hiring your product to do?
People don't buy products — they hire them to make progress in their lives. Jobs to Be Done reframes your customer not as a demographic but as a person in a specific situation trying to accomplish something. The job has three dimensions: functional (what to accomplish), emotional (how to feel), and social (how to be seen). Most products compete only on functional. The best ones win on all three.
How to run this
- Pick one specific customer — a real person in a specific moment.
- Write the job story: "When I [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome]."
- Break into three job types: Functional, Emotional, and Social.
- List what they currently hire — existing alternatives they use.
- Identify the gap — what current solutions don't do. That's your opportunity.
Jobs to Be Done
Clayton Christensen · The Innovator's Dilemma · popularised 2003–2016Defining the job by your product category. "They want a drill" is not a job. "They want a hole in the wall" is. Push further: they want their shelf to be level. They want their family to think they're competent.
A job story so specific that, when you read it back, the customer says "that's exactly it" — not "yeah, something like that."
When you have a job story validated with 3+ real people and can describe the gap between existing solutions and the job that needs doing.
Try it interactively with WAiDE
WAiDE will guide you through the Jobs to Be Done framework — uncovering the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of your customer's job. You'll leave with a validated job story and session report.