Product Discovery Vocabulary
5 exercises — Practice JTBD framing, problem-space thinking, assumption mapping, continuous discovery, and anti-pattern identification.
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You're learning about the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework. A PM describes user behavior as "they hire our app to..." — a new team member asks what this language means. Which explanation is correct?
JTBD reframes product thinking around user goals rather than product features — users "hire" products to make progress in their lives, not to use specific functionality.
The classic JTBD example: people don't buy a drill — they hire it to make a hole. More profoundly, they hire it to hang a shelf so their home feels organised. The emotional job (feeling organised) is as important as the functional job (making a hole). In product discovery, JTBD interviews use the "timeline interview" technique: walk the user through the last moment they used a competing solution or made the purchase decision — not asking about features, but about the circumstances and motivations.
Key vocabulary:
• functional job — the practical task the user needs to accomplish
• emotional job — how the user wants to feel while doing the task
• social job — how the user wants to be perceived by others while using the product
The classic JTBD example: people don't buy a drill — they hire it to make a hole. More profoundly, they hire it to hang a shelf so their home feels organised. The emotional job (feeling organised) is as important as the functional job (making a hole). In product discovery, JTBD interviews use the "timeline interview" technique: walk the user through the last moment they used a competing solution or made the purchase decision — not asking about features, but about the circumstances and motivations.
Key vocabulary:
• functional job — the practical task the user needs to accomplish
• emotional job — how the user wants to feel while doing the task
• social job — how the user wants to be perceived by others while using the product