“Learners don’t need learning programs,
they need…”
“Learners don’t need learning programs,
The ‘Jobs-to-be-Done’ approach: empathy that matters for learning eXperience design
The ‘Jobs-to-be-Done’ (JTBD) approach is a framework that has its origins in marketing and innovation. To set the scene, a well-known quote by business professor Theodore Levitt: ‘People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole’.
Essentially the JTBD approach is very straightforward and focuses on what people aim to achieve, independent of the tools, services or support they use. In this article we’ll explore the JTBD framework and how it can be applied by learning designers.
Needs and empathy
The JTBD approach is about finding out what people really need for them to achieve things that matter in their lives: the jobs that they want to get done. For learning designers these ‘people’ are the learners that they design for. That sounds logical and simple. But let’s do the ‘Levitt challenge’.
Based on the Levitt quote, complete the sentence ‘Learners don’t need learning programs, they need…’. Or even better, take a closer look at what Levitt says to understand that he is talking about ‘people’, not about ‘drill operators’. So, the first suggestion would be to stop thinking of learners: think of people or when workplace-oriented, think of professionals and the jobs they want to get done.
Now you might say that you always think of the people you design for because you’re not just a learning designer, you’re a learning experience designer! You know that you have to apply empathy, that you have to put yourself in the shoes of the people you’re designing for. You even have tools and approaches to do so. You use empathy maps to plot what your audience (the people that you are designing for) are saying, thinking, seeing and feeling in relation to the topic that you design for. You even collate their characteristics in a ‘persona’: an oddly-named virtual person (‘Dan Drillmeister’) that represents all the typicalities of your target audience. Consider age, education level, job level, digital fluency, preferred outfit, family circumstances, hobbies, whatever.
Meaningful empathy
Empathy maps and personas might give you some insight into general characteristics, but not to the needs or things people want to achieve in their lives, not the jobs that they want to get done. To be a great learning designer you don’t need just any old empathy, you need empathy that matters!
The core of JTBD
One of the key promoters of the JTBD approach is the well-known and popular Clayton Christensen. When he talks about JTBD, he often mentions that people ‘hire’ all kinds of products and services to get things done that matter to them. You ‘hire’ a quarter-inch drill to get you quarter-inch holes, you ‘hire’ a specific app on your smartphone to listen to your favorite music, you ‘hire’ a milkshake to nurture and entertain you during a dull commute, you ‘hire’ a training to become licensed to operate in a certain job. So, it starts with what we call ‘functional jobs to be done’ – a thing that people like to achieve because it matters to them. In my Learning Notes #38 ‘Jobs to be Done for Learnings design(ers)’ I give four more examples of this approach to learning design.
Your functional task as a learning designer
Be aware of the functional jobs that people want to get done. If you do, they might want to ‘hire’ your learning solution to get their jobs done. Always start with understanding the functional jobs to be done and if you do that, you’ll apply empathy that matters. Or as the Americans would say, you’ll use empathy on steroids. But there is more to come! Check out the e-book ‘Successful training companies put the learner first‘ that can help you to start mapping these functional tasks.
Types of JTBD
Now that we know more about the core functional jobs to be done and how to define them, it’s time to have a closer look at different types of jobs. Related to the functional jobs to be done there are also emotional, social and consumption chain jobs to be done. Emotional jobs to be done are related to the experience and feelings when executing a functional job to be done. How do people want to feel when they are executing a functional job? For example: safe, confident, secure, proud, or happy.
The question for you as a learning designer
Does your design ensure that the user gets the functional task done, but also cater for the way they want to feel when doing it: safe, confident, secure, proud, and/or happy? Think about people who take blood samples at a hospital. Their functional job is to get the right amount of blood to have a good sample. Their emotional job is to do it in a way that causes the least amount of pain for the patient.
Social jobs are about how people are perceived by others while executing a functional job. It might be important to them to be viewed as; in control, a leader, looking good, an expert, an influencer, inspirational, or a good example. Or maybe it’s just fine (or not!) to be seen as a show-off, a rookie, a newbie, a ‘struggler’ or a failure.
Be aware (have empathy!) on how your design can respond to this
People might be more likely to hire your solution if it ‘protects’ them during the phase when they are vulnerable, trying to apply new skills and approaches. Or going back to the ‘blood sample’ example, there is always a ‘super colleague’ in the team who is good at finding the right vein where others fail.
Lastly, there is the consumption chain job to be done. This is about how easy or hard it will be for them to ‘hire’ the solution that you designed for them and the level of difficulty and which steps to take to get the product or service available to get your functional job done.
A relevant example for learning design…
In terms of learning design, consider the following situation: a professional is facing a problem at work ‘to get their functional job done’. When they look for support, they find a course in the LMS that seems to be very helpful but the next training is only planned 2 months later. They also need to fill out ten fields to apply as well as get approval from their supervisor and HR to join this training. Or, they can type a keyword in the ‘help’ function of their IT-system and instantly choose the most relevant option from three performance support items (a short video, a checklist or a flowchart). Which of the options will she hire to help her get her job done?
Empathy ‘reloaded’
Where more ‘classical’ learning designers might focus more on content and subject matter experts when designing, learning experience designers tend to focus more on the ‘end user’. In general, that seems a positive evolution. When learning experience designers ‘proudly present’ that their work is based on empathy, we should be cautious. When empathy is guided only by approaches like personas or empathy maps it might be too general and shallow and therefore not very relevant.
The Jobs-to-be-Done approach seems a good framework to get it right because it focuses on empathy that matters.
