Jobs to be Done and Use Cases

Biggest milestone this week - working through Jobs to be Done (JTBD) and defining use cases to further define the EchoAI product.

The definitions of JTBD and use cases tends to vary depending on who you ask - I found a simple version that works for me. Here's my take on the JTBD framework:

• JTBD: Understand what the persona is trying to do and why, and what are the steps they're going through today to get the job done.

• Use Cases: How the persona would get the job done differently if they had your product (your product should make it possible to do the job faster, cheaper, or easier -ideally all three).

I broke it down further into what areas of frustration does the persona experience as they complete the steps to finish the job, whether using AI was necessarily a better alternative, and some of the motivations behind why the persona wanted the job done to begin with. A full breakdown of the Echo JTBD down below for download; feel free to adapt the spreadsheet for your own product definition exercises if it helps!

I found the exercise valuable for organizing ideas, and even identifying new uses for the product I hadn't thought of.

Ultimately, I prioritized the use cases that I thought would have the most benefit to the products' users for an MVP to prototype. It ended up being the exact same idea that I had from the very beginning, but now it feels like I also clarified which scenarios and personas were the right fit for an MVP prototype.

It also helps that doing this on a spreadsheet created a much cleaner and organized artifact that can be used by a product team (which this project isn't going to be, but it's a good exercise for us working PMs).

JTBD & Use Cases - Echo, Product Research AI.xlsx

Download XLSX • 83KB

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