Jobs to be Done Canvas

A Jobs to be Done (JTBD) canvas captures the complete picture of why customers "hire" products to make progress in their lives. Based on Clayton Christensen's framework, JTBD goes beyond features and demographics to understand the underlying motivations.functional, emotional, and social.that drive customer behavior.

When to Use

• When deeply researching customer motivations before building
• To reframe product positioning around customer progress
• When existing personas feel too surface-level or demographic
• During competitive analysis to identify why customers switch
• When designing marketing messages that resonate
• To align team on who the customer really is and what they need

When NOT to Use

• You need a person-shaped artifact (goals, behaviors, quotes) for design or marketing work -> use foundation-persona; the canvas captures the job, the persona captures the person
• You have no customer research yet -> synthesize interviews first with discover-interview-synthesis; the canvas's insights must trace to research, not assumptions
• You are framing one specific problem to solve now -> use define-problem-statement
• You need to map opportunities to a measurable outcome for prioritization -> use define-opportunity-tree