I can’t name any organization that doesn’t conduct some form of qualitative user research. However, very few do so on a systematic, end-to-end basis. This results in deep understanding within pockets, but no clear picture of how things fit together end-to-end from the customer perspective.
My suggested alternative is to leverage the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) methodology. This requires that user personae be very crisply defined and validated as a prerequisite. With this in hand:
- For each user personae, break down the value that the persona expects to be delivered into tasks (aka Jobs). Be sure to also include any pre-requisite tasks, even if they don’t deliver value on an ongoing basis (e.g. connecting SSO or integrating with a key data source). It is important that this exercise be done in a “clean” capacity based on purely delivering value in an idealized state and that it is not reflective of the current product’s implementation.
- Define a scale to measure the effectiveness of how well your product fulfills a given job. For example:
- 0 == Does not fulfill this job at all
- 1 == Fulfills some requirements of the job, but many requirements are unfulfilled requiring the user to go elsewhere or remain dissatisfied
- 2 == Fulfills most job requirements, but significant user pain and/or workarounds are involved; some requirements are unfulfilled with no solution inside of the product
- 3 == Fulfills all job requirements, but moderate to significant user pain and workarounds are involved; user needs are met but they would migrate to a better solution if available
- 4 == Fulfills all job requirements with minimal to moderate user pain and workarounds; user is satisfied to the point that they would at least be neutral if NPS surveyed
- 5 == Completely fulfills this job with zero pain or workarounds; user is completely satisfied and would be a promoter if NPS surveyed
- Have the product team assess and score how well the current product fulfills the jobs to be done; leverage internal customer-facing teams to help score the assessment
- Validate the internal assessment with actual end customers and adjust scores accordingly
Jobs-to-be-Done research is often quite a harsh wake up call when first conducted. But is absolutely essential because if core user expectations are not being met at all or are being met with a high degree of user pain, it is a recipe for churn and customer dissatisfaction. Those should be the focus area of the product roadmap before any aspirational jobs or other investments get prioritized.
As products and customers mature, it is typical to start to segment user personae into maturity levels (e.g. Novice, Core, Power Users). As this naturally starts to occur, it is important to also segment the JTBD methodology into the same maturity buckets. What works well for a Power user might not work well at all for a Novice, or even be relevant.
In this market and economy, companies will be significantly penalized if they are not getting the basics right. The JTBD methodology helps spotlight where the basics are not right for your product’s current core use cases. It also identifies opportunities for up-and-coming / aspirational use cases.
At the end of the day, JTBD is a tool to ensure that your product has the best user experience possible. This methodology is a great candidate to be owned by the design/user experience team and can actually serve as an organizational bridge-builder to better integrate design/user experience into the product and/or broader organization.
Many stakeholders argue that JTBD is not innovative nor sexy and can be classified as boring. I would like to remind that having a user experience that delights users (especially over and above competition) is absolutely an area for innovation and differentiation. It is effectively Apple’s entire playbook at a macro-level. Just ask Microsoft and BlackBerry how well their smartphone businesses turned out despite having the most comprehensive and feature-rich products while they were still in the market.