A Case Study:
How to Discover User Needs with Jobs-to-be-done

Project Overview

The purpose of this project was to improve the online banking platform and app for a Credit Union. I was the UX lead on this project collaborating with a UX manager on various parts of the project.

The Credit Union wanted to significantly improve their understanding of customer needs to inform the banking app’s product development roadmap and ensure the needs of the customers were met. This objective was uncovered during a previous project where improvements were being made for joint banking customers. It became clear early in the discovery process of that project that there were more unmet needs than originally thought. A user research project was put into motion to be proactive in understanding this.

Challenge

Before this project, the Credit Union did not dedicate significant research to understanding what outcomes their customers had in their banking app. Typically they relied on customer feedback or internal users (employees) to inform product updates. While this can be a means to get insight into areas of focus, it does not provide the full story of what the user’s journey looks like or a holistic view of how all of the product’s areas work together.

Users are generally unreliable sources of feedback when left to their own devices. It can be easy for them to forget what exactly went wrong and they need the technical insight to understand how their problem could be managed. Behavioral data needs to be collected to fully assess needs, outcomes, and steps they are taking to complete their desired task, or desired job.

Approach

1. Conduct customer interviews to uncover their relationship with the Credit Union.
2. Develop customer profiles outlining triggers, motivations, and needs.
3. Conduct user interviews uncovering job steps and desired outcomes.
4. Develop job maps (journey maps) of steps users are taking before, during, and after their desired outcomes.
5. Create target analysis documentation.
6. Create outcome-based segments.

Process & Research

To begin the user research project we wanted to use Jobs-to-be-done methodologies (a term coined by Clayton Christensen) to uncover customers’ needs and desired outcomes. This proven framework was decided to provide the best lens to inform a product development roadmap. Customers of the credit union’s banking platform app were recruited to begin the interview process.

Customers were asked a series of questions to understand their relationship with the Credit Union. The goal was to uncover how they manage their finances and the circumstances that impacted their financial decisions. With this knowledge, we were able to understand the similarities that they shared along with their differences. Profiles were assembled for each member (Figure 1.1) that presented their triggers, motivations, primary job, and needs.

Figure 1.1 - Template of what the member profiles looked like to share interview findings.

Now that there was a good understanding of what customers were trying to do, it was possible to dive deep into user needs. The main objective for this segment of the research was to uncover specific job steps and their desired outcomes. General users were recruited, screening for banking app consumers in various criteria groups. The groups consisted of joint bankers, business bankers, and also bankers in different age groups to capture life-stage events. A total of 55 users were interviewed to ensure we were able to assess the full picture of a banking user. Typically in a jobs-to-be-done format, 12 users would be sufficient. However, we increased this to account for the different diverse groups with unique circumstances and varied banking jobs.

With the extensive amount of qualitative data collected it was necessary to organize and group the users’ job steps into job maps. Job mapping, which is similar to journey mapping, is a popular methodology in jobs-to-be-done to organize the user’s job journey, before, during, and after they are trying to complete their desired outcome. Each group's circumstances and desired outcomes along with the job steps were organized (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 - Template of job mapping journey for different groups

The next stage of the user research included sharing the job maps with project stakeholders. Additionally, this is where product development planning for improvements began. Using a target analysis approach (Figure 1.3) job steps from the job maps were extracted into four categories: What the product is best at, what it is good at, what it struggles to do, and what it won't do. Organizing the job steps into these categories helps narrow down what should be a focus from a product perspective. Next, these were organized into a Venn diagram to sort out business needs, customer needs, and growth opportunities. (Figure 1.4) More documentation was created to articulate the opportunities and recommended approaches to consider.

Figure 1.3 (left) & 1.4 (right) - Examples of a target analysis to determine product improvement areas.

In addition to understanding the users’ job journey and target analysis assessments, outcome-based segments were created. Outcome-based segmentation or outcome-driven innovation (ODI) was pioneered by Tony Ulwick. Outcome-based segmentation is a modern form of segmentation that looks at how groups with unmet needs are different from each other. By understanding differences you can uncover unique groups of opportunities that may have previously been unknown. This process first included consolidating similar outcomes discovered from the job mapping. Next, it included using k-means clustering methods to group users with similar outcomes. From this, three outcome-based segments were defined. (Figure 1.5) Job statements and additional job maps were developed to further define these users.

Figure 1.5 - Visual of clustering outcomes and segmenting users into outcome-based segments.

Identifying members in the outcome-based segments was the final stage of the user research project. Using MixPanel (a data insight tool), cohorts were created with product flow definitions in addition to tracking other user flows outside of the outcome base segments. The cohorts and flows created a platform to further quantify and understand the users and how future product improvements impacted them.

Next Steps

With the user research project complete and the extensive amount of data documented; knowledge sharing and cross-departmental alignment is key to product improvement projects in progress. Additionally, assessing the MixPanel cohorts is necessary to better understand these users and uncover other questions that may have surfaced.

Retrospectives

What went well:

• The knowledge gained from this project will be used for years to come to inform product development.
• This project provided a valuable source of knowledge to put together an information architecture strategy while also giving users a voice in how the product should be structured.

Areas for Improvement:

• The project ran into recruitment issues with the recruiting platform. This slowed down the interviewing process. Having an open calendar for participants to select on-demand sessions proved to be more efficient.
• The sorting process was very manual and time-consuming. For future projects, I am looking for new technologies in AI to help with automating or semi-automating sorting.