How to do JTBD interviews, and define personal metrics
Welcome to the introductory guide in a form of a series of short stories about jobs-to-be-done, from how to define them, and how to measure them to how to analyze them, and take action that will yield better results. How to gain 100% clarity and alignment, and minimize risks by 90%.
Some basic knowledge about what is a JTBD would be helpful to have. If you don’t have it, you might want to start with this article in Harvard Business Review.
This is the first story.
JTBD interviews and how to define personal outcome metrics
Look at everything only from a JTBD lens
Quick overview of the JTBD process and different methods
Before I will begin, I want to address the main confusion in the JTBD space. There are no different approaches in JTBD. Everything comes from psychology and behavioral science and science in general. The confusion comes from the lack of listening to another side and a lack of understanding of underlying science and human nature.
All those “different approaches” can and shall be combined together. Everything you will read in those series will be presenting a modern, simplified, and combined approach that can be applied in practice by anyone from a student to a new startup to an enterprise. There are different levels of JTBD analysis for that.
JTBD and discovery work starts from JTBD interviews. Both internal ones, e.g. interviewing domain experts and stakeholders, to, of course, external ones, and most interviews shall be external. You have to interview people who actually have a particular challenge, unmet need, or people who made a purchase decision in the past.
You can use sticky notes and whiteboarding tools or modern end-to-end JTBD and discovery platform like ATHENNO to help you collect and organize your findings during interviews. Sticky notes go to either positive forces or negative forces or a journey (timeline) where I have my Journey-to-be-done structure with 5 categories.
After that, interviews are summarized and synthesized. Job stories are formed. Affinity mapping (manual basic clustering) can already do the job with something similar to a rainbow spreadsheet in UX research. Here you reached a basic JTBD analysis.
You then can continue into advanced. From the previous step, clear JyTBDs are framed with clear personal metrics. When this is completed, a JTBD survey can be generated. That also shall contain profiling questions. You have many notes from the previous step to help here. You collect responses and a JTBD report with basic cluster analysis is presented to you instantly.
This is the maximum for most teams, but you can continue into the final - scientific JTBD analysis phase where you scale and iterate the previous 2 steps.
JTBD Hierarchy
Let’s start from the hierarchy of the information and the relationship between:
Journeys-to-be-done (JyTBD) (Timeline or simply a Journey),
Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD),
Job stories and forces (JTBD forces or forces of progress),
Interviews,
And personal outcome metrics (job hiring criteria) or just personal metrics, or statistically - p-metrics.
At the highest level everything starts from the Journey-to-be-done (JyTBD), the entire process, of transformation people go through step by step in order to achieve their end goals.
Think of JyTBD as a group of jobs-to-be-done in a particular order. You can also think of it as a sort of job map, or a more universal, complex, and bigger JTBD.
Jobs can be divided into 3 main categories:
Preparation - when people are preparing for the job,
Execution - when the core job is actually being done or experienced,
Conclusion - when people conclude, maintain, change, or delete the job.
Then, you can add any additional context, what even happens before people are thinking of entering into this process or after they have done everything. These contextual jobs are always different for different people, while core functional needs can be the same for many.
The key difference between a typical journey or a storyboard and a JyTBD is:
Exactly in that “Before” context, and “After” context;
And any deeper context in between for each JTBD.
In the end, the hierarchy looks like this table with stickers below (similar to the story map):
Moving across the JTBD Hierarchy
The only difference between journeys-to-be-done, jobs-to-be-done and personal metrics is defined by you. There are no strict boundaries. Only your mental models and your mental space.
You decide what is your unit of analysis, what are your goals, and whether you need to focus more on the bigger picture, or dive deeper into very granular details. Do you need to go horizontally or vertically? Do you need to go outside of your room into a hallway to find another room VS do you need to find something inside your room?
Usually, you want to start from traditional interviews and job stories in the middle of the hierarchy.
Then go from there either a level up into a journey and related or side jobs/needs in some way, and that “some way” is this journey-to-be-done;
Or a level down into more specific job stories, context around this particular need, and many personal metrics.
Basically, JyTBD is the same as JTBD, just on a larger scale. This means the opposite is also true - you can go from any JTBD into a new JyTBD to expand your research more in that area. Kinda job with sub-jobs with sub-sub-jobs and so on. You can go down that tree as long as you wish.
Job stories and forces
A job story is a documented structured feedback that describes some job-to-be-done a real person (not a persona or any imaginary person) has or wants to do/achieve/experience, and that is collected only during qualitative research, an interview with that real person.
If the sum of all positive forces is higher than the sum of all negative forces, then a person is more likely to switch to a new product and make a positive transformation in their life.
Job story includes different types of psychological affects (forces) that either:
Motivate or push a person toward a new future state. (Positive forces)
Or demotivate, or prevent a person from getting where a person wants to be. (Negative forces)
If positive forces are larger than negative ones, then a person is more likely to make a shift and become a new person, adopt a new product, or make any positive progress in their life or in society.
Often people want to achieve something in their life, let's say, get rid of unhealthy habits, but they never manage to actually make the transformation happen due to too many negative forces.
That could be laziness, depression, lack of confidence, or clarity. It could be an addiction, comfort zone, fear of the unknown, risks, something people want to avoid but can’t, and so on.
The main story can be organized into 3 sections:
Situation (When do you have this need? What was around? What was the origin?)
Need / Motivation / Task (What do you want to do?)
Goal / Desired personal outcome (Why? What do you want to achieve?)
Optional extra context and more details of different forces can be organized into:
Extra functional context:
Frequency (How often person needs to do or experience this JTBD?)
Duration (How long does it take to do or experience now?)
and Current solution (What person currently is using to get the job done?)
“Other” context:
Avoidance context (What person tries or would like to minimize, avoid or resolve? Are there any negative side effects, or dangerous situations?)
Emotional context (How the person would like to feel?)
Social Context (How the person would like to be perceived by others?)
Financial Context (Does the person has any financial constraints, goals, or needs within this job-to-be-done?)
An example of a job story: “When I am feeling tired at home after work (Situation) -> I want to play Xbox with my friends (Task) -> So I could kill some time, have fun and socialize with my friends without going out every other day (Personal goal)
Interviewing
Before you will be able to frame clear job stories and journey-to-be-done, let’s dive deeper into the JTBD interview itself:
Like with any experiment or research prepare a semi-structured plan, questions, or tasks that you will go through with each participant. Leave some space for information about the participant at the top.
Now let’s go into the main part with 3 categories:
Uncategorized (Quick notes)
Behavior with 2 sub-categories:
Negative Forces & Struggles - What prevents this participant(s) from getting where they want to be? What keeps them in the same place? What are their struggles? Barriers holding them back from switching or achieving their goals? Habits of the present? Addiction? Lack of confidence, knowledge? Anxieties of a new product, service, or any other state and transformation?
Positive Forces, Goals & Motivations - What motivates this participant(s), allows them to change, adapt something new, pushes them from their current situation, or attracts them to something new? What are their dreams, and goals? What are they trying to get rid of, avoid, or minimize? What are they willing to gain, maximize, and improve? Why?
And the individual Journey or a Timeline with 5 sub-sections (Let participant(s) walk you through their path, from their first thought to actually choosing and actually using something? What was their first thought? What triggered them to look for something? What was around? What changed? What made them make a decision? How do they use it? What are they trying to accomplish with it? What do they do after? What is the end outcome, metrics, thoughts, memories, and satisfaction?):
Before - Firth Thought, Passive/Active Looking, Environment, Obstacles, Triggers
Preparation - Planning, Researching, Deciding, Buying, Installing, Delivering, Etc.
Execution & Tasks - Actually doing the job or experiencing something socially or emotionally
Conclusion - Maintaining, Removing, Summarizing, Switching, Ending experience
After & Outcomes - Ultimate result, outcomes, satisfaction, final thoughts, memories
Create Job Stories from Interviews
First, conclude your interview or observation, and then summarize all your notes and attach relevant file/recording/document/link/etc. Do this after the each interview. Write a summary or frame job stories.
Before the interview have a clear goal and JTBD or JyTBD you are researching in mind because you will have a very limited time and would need to focus.
If you are just getting started with JTBD research and don’t know the exact JTBD, then define an abstract JyTBD and hypothesize, and write some JTBDs or steps for this journey. Talk initially to a domain expert or a founder. Then correct your initial hypotheses during interviews, and probably, you could write down multiple job stories.
During an interview be absolutely open-minded and do not ask leading questions. Focus on forces, what is happening before and after, not just tasks and what people do.
Don’t focus on opinions, and what people bought, products. Focus on facts, what personal outcome, goal, or reward people are looking for, why exactly, and specific actions and steps people go through to get it done, or what prevents them from getting where they want to be. Document the progress people are trying to make. Don’t talk about your solution or product at all.
Understanding not only what people want to achieve and why, but also what prevents people from getting there and why - is as important.
Absolutely every conversation I always start with the same two questions:
“What are your goals or dreams? What do you want to achieve, to become? Why?”
and “What do you think prevents you from getting where you want to be? What challenges do you have? What have you done on your own to try to solve your problem?
Start by writing down the main job story for the JTBD you want to analyze.
Then expand the job story with more questions and context, and depending on your research goal -> focus more on specific forces.
Co-create with your potential customers and users, and for them. You can not only write your notes down and form job stories during an interview itself, but you can also read them loud back to the person, and see their reaction. Or even share your screen and work on structured notes together. They probably will start adding even more context or correcting you. It opens you new doors to expand into any direction and uncover the smallest details.
Interview around 5-10 people to find similar patterns and bring in more context.
Always attach a real person only to a one job story from that real person. That means if you are interviewing 5 people, you will have to create 5 job stories.
This also allows your team to collaborate without conflicts.
Summarize job stories, create a table of personal outcome metrics and present your findings
After each interview, write or update a short summary of the JTBD or a journey you are analyzing.
When you feel like you are not learning anything new, you might want to stop interviews because you reached saturation of your research. If you don’t know about that, just always do 5 interviews. The most important part is to interview the same type of people with the same JTBD. If it is different research or a different need, you need to interview another 5 people.
Finally, go through all job stories, forces, and any context from all interviews. Now try to formulate one short sentence, a thesis - some personal outcome metric or a statement that all people in the same JTBD use to measure the success of this JTBD.
With more interviews, you might discover more and more context and very different variations of these personal metrics.
Record them in the table or spreadsheet.
These metrics should be as granular and specific as possible. This is the most important part of the JTBD research and analysis.
Examples of personal metrics: “Minimize the time it takes to find a game with my friends in the evening when I came home from work”
You find the core job story and main context. Then paraphrase it in a way you clearly know how to measure like a success metric, a measurement, or a number. Like any business or product success metric, it is something concrete, measurable, and time-bound.
Now when have a list of these specific personal metrics - you then present it to your leadership. Do not waste their time on long presentations, many words, many stories, and every piece of context. Just straight to the point - what is a one-line summary for the JTBD, what are personal metrics, in what order are they, and what are these “true” needs?
Then what would be your recommendation: which action to take next, which metrics to make now part of a deeper and statistical analysis?
Summary
JTBD Interview is an open qualitative semi-structured research technique that allows connecting qualitative and quantitative research together and is part of the exploratory JTBD analysis and continuous discovery where the goal is to uncover personal outcome metrics.
Journeys and Jobs-to-be-done are solution-independent. Never make solutions part of interviews or research at this stage.
Look at everything only from a JTBD lens. Upgrade people rather than your products.
Think about why people do what they do, what they are really trying to accomplish, or what prevents them from getting there. Understanding both positive and negative forces are important.
JTBD interviews don’t have a specific direction. It is crucial to be open-minded and uncover as many personal outcome metrics as possible.
The structure above personal metrics is flexible and you can use whatever makes sense to you. It can be just under one JTBD, or you could research and break down the entire journey into steps and then even smaller measurable outcomes.
Have some abstract structure before each interview, but don’t have a solid structure. This might limit what you could discover. Have a core structure, for example, like in a job story, and then any extra context depending on your case.
You can just use paper, stickers, a modern ink tablet like reMarkable, online whiteboarding tools like Miro, or modern continuous discovery/JTBD platforms like Athenno to help you with JTBD interviews, even if you are not an expert.
JTBD interviews and job stories can be used in many different ways:
To bring structure into interviews and UX/CX research.
To make sure nothing important is forgotten.
To help more junior talent or entrepreneurs, and people shifting professions get started, onboarded into larger and more experienced UX/product discovery/innovation teams.
To help teams communicate better, collaborate online remotely, and align.
To design better products, better marketing messages, and campaigns, increase growth and conversions and minimize the risks and dissatisfaction.
To help individuals, teams, and organizations shift their mindset from thinking about what-s, features, and outputs -> to possibilities, what if-s, what could be-s, why-s, and outcomes. It forces you to ask why people do what they do and what they are really trying to achieve a lot.
But most importantly - to help the team identify as many very specific and granular personal outcome metrics (p-metrics) as possible, and identify the true north star, transformation, goal, or need of each JTBD for different people. This data can be used then to go from qualitative research to quantitative research and statistical analysis.
Then p-metrics are derived from the job stories and specifically - personal outcomes. Personal metrics are then used to create a JTBD survey and to perform statistical analysis. More about that in the next chapter.
This was the first story in the series.
JTBD interviews and how to define personal outcome metrics
Upgrade your user, not your product.
Don’t build better cameras, make better photographers.
— Kathy Sierra
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The term “jobs-to-be-done” was originally coined by a late Harvard Business School professor - Clayton Christensen, a pioneer of many innovation theories, specifically his theory of disruptive innovation and jobs-to-be-done theory. The concept, however, isn’t new and was always there for thousands of years. It was just called in many different ways and has many different layers from commercial, and practical to thought-philosophical.
The term “JTBD Forces of progress” was defined by Bob Moesta who co-authored different jobs-to-be-done theories and approaches, especially in JTBD interviews.
The term “Job story” was created by Alan Klement in 2013.
The term “Journey-to-be-done (JyTBD)” was created by Mev-Rael in 2021 based on his own research and experience, and to address many confusions and different ways of practicing JTBD, and when designing the ATHENNO. It also addresses the problem of top-level management consulting and scientific JTBD analysis being too expensive and hence not accessible to an average entrepreneur and a small business. It combined long-term progress and transformation people want to make in their lives, forces of progress, and the vision of a universal JTBD, with a functional job map, side, and related needs, while giving the flexibility to a researcher to adapt to any situation, and making research steps simpler and clearer.
The term “personal metric” and the statistical term “p-metric” was also created by Mev-Rael. The main term and concept, however, are based on Tony Ulwick’s Outcome-Driven Innovation. There they are called outcome statements. It is true to call this concept just a need, a personal outcome metric, a personal metric, however, I would avoid statements so teams would have a totally different shift in mindset. Whenever we hear the term “metric”, we instantly think of something we need to improve or achieve. Organizations for decades were thinking of their success metrics. Now it is time to shift focus from organization to a person and a society and their personal metrics. When personal metrics become part of the statistical research, they become p-metrics. Not to be confused with a p-value :-)
