• Lack of context: Bug logs don’t reveal *why* a user was affected or what they were trying to achieve.
• Focus on symptoms: Fixing visible issues doesn’t address deeper usability friction users feel during key tasks.
• One-size-fits-all scoring: Prioritizing by severity or number of reports often ignores strategic goals or user intent.

Without JTBD:

With JTBD:

Key benefits of using JTBD to improve user experience:

• Reveal hidden bottlenecks: JTBD identifies moments where users fail to make progress, even when no bugs exist.
• Clarify what truly matters: Not every request or pain point is tied to a key job. JTBD helps teams filter the noise.
• Bridge research to design: Customer research becomes immediately actionable, tied to specific UX strategy decisions.

One of the biggest strengths of the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is its power to uncover why users engage with a product in the first place. Rather than reacting to surface-level issues like click rates or app crashes, JTBD focuses on the user’s end goal – the actual “job” they are hiring your product to perform. This mindset shift leads to more meaningful user experience fixes because every decision is tied back to the user's desired outcome.

Here are a few case scenarios where JTBD helped prioritize impactful UX improvements:

Example 1: Streamlining Onboarding for Mental Health Apps

A digital health platform discovered its users were not completing onboarding flows. A typical fix might involve shortening the steps or redesigning the form layout. However, after applying JTBD research, the team found that users' core job was “to feel better quickly without added emotional effort.” The insight shifted the team’s direction from UI tweaks to creating a guided, empathetic onboarding journey that instilled emotional trust before asking for personal information. Drop-off rates fell, and engagement improved significantly.

Example 2: Reducing Abandonment in E-Commerce Checkout

E-commerce shoppers often abandon carts – but why? A JTBD lens revealed that the underlying job was “to buy the right product effortlessly and confidently.” Instead of addressing button placements or auto-fill settings alone, the team prioritized adding clearer size guides, return policy assurances, and customer reviews upfront. These fixes aligned better with the emotional and functional aspects of the shopper's goal, reducing friction and improving conversions.

Example 3: Clarifying Navigation in B2B Software

B2B users trying a new customer relationship management (CRM) tool were getting lost during set-up. JTBD interviews revealed a job of “to organize client information quickly so I appear prepared and competent.” Traditional bug logs had flagged navigational confusion, but the insights showed that performance issues weren’t the main blockers – lack of guidance was. The team prioritized adding in-app tips and templated workflows, allowing users to feel confident from the start.

In these examples, UX fixes were not chosen at random or by guesswork. They were prioritized based on users’ true pains and progress points. This strategic approach is a defining advantage of user experience prioritization with JTBD.

Once you’ve conducted customer research using the JTBD framework, the next step is acting on those insights to improve your UX. But how do you translate a user’s “job” into a clear design decision? This can feel complex, especially if your team is used to working from dashboards or feature request lists.

Here’s a simple step-by-step approach for turning JTBD insights into UX design priorities:

1. Identify the Core Jobs and Struggles

Start by summarizing what job users are trying to accomplish with your product. JTBD interviews and observations often reveal emotional drivers, anxieties, and unmet needs. Organize these into core and secondary jobs – the main goal and any supporting tasks that enable it.

Example: A job might be “to quickly compare software options so I can recommend the best one to my boss.” Key struggles could include unclear feature differentiation or lack of side-by-side comparisons.

2. Map Pain Points to Jobs

Now, walk through your current user journey and flag where pain points make that job harder to complete. These are your opportunity zones for UX intervention. Avoid looking at bugs in isolation – instead, connect each one back to a job being blocked.

Ask: “Does this slowdown stop users from making progress on their job?”

3. Prioritize UX Fixes Based on Impact to Job Completion

Prioritization becomes clearer when you ask, “Which issues most directly affect the user’s ability to complete their job with confidence?” These ROI-positive fixes should be at the top of your UX backlog. Small design changes that unblock major tasks can be more valuable than larger redesigns that miss the job goal.

4. Use JTBD to Justify Design Trade-Offs

Product and UX teams often face tough choices – what to fix now, what to delay, and what to drop. JTBD gives your team a shared language to explain why certain fixes matter more. When optimization decisions get tricky, return to the job-to-be-done and ask what drives real user satisfaction.

5. Test Changes Against the Job Goal

After launching UX improvements, validate whether users now complete their jobs more smoothly. This can be measured qualitatively (via interviews) or quantitatively (job completion time, repeat usage). Iterate if needed, but always keep job progress at the center of evaluation.

By following these steps, organizations transform qualitative customer research into actionable UX strategy. JTBD creates a user experience improvement process that is rooted in empathy, clarity, and business value.

Bringing the Jobs To Be Done methodology into your UX and product development processes doesn’t just improve the user experience – it also helps teams collaborate more effectively. When UX designers and product managers share a deep understanding of what users are really trying to accomplish, they can align roadmaps, streamline decisions, and deliver more impactful outcomes together.

Building a Shared Language Around Jobs

One key benefit of integrating JTBD into your workflow is that it creates a unifying framework. UX teams naturally focus on usability and interaction, while product managers may be balancing growth metrics, timelines, and stakeholder needs. The JTBD approach allows both groups to center on what the user actually needs rather than what they say they want or what features competitors offer.

Collaborating Around Customer Research

High-impact collaboration begins with shared exposure to research. Rather than having user interviews or surveys live in silos, bring PMs and UX leads into the room – or the recordings – to hear firsthand accounts of user struggles. Discuss jobs collectively, and highlight how different user segments may carry different functional, emotional, or social goals.

Even simple tools like job stories (e.g., “When I’m evaluating options, I want to compare top features so I feel confident in my pick”) help steer product discussions around real user drivers.

Working as a Unified Prioritization Team

Once shared JTBD insights are in hand, co-prioritization becomes clearer. Product managers can use these insights to inform planning and sequencing, while UX teams translate the jobs into specific enhancements, flows, or interface updates. This prevents misalignment, such as investing in new features users aren’t asking for – or worse, can’t use effectively.

Together, teams can:

• Identify which UX problems most impact job success
• Agree on which issues merit short-term sprint inclusion vs. long-term roadmap planning
• Create JTBD-based metrics to measure the success of UX and product changes

Encouraging Ongoing Iteration

JTBD isn’t a one-and-done insight. It should evolve as users, markets, and technologies shift. Both product managers and UX leads should revisit JTBD research regularly to track how user expectations have changed – and adjust priorities accordingly.

JTBD gives UX and product teams a clearer way to listen, align, and act. That means fewer guesses and more decisions grounded in what truly drives growth and satisfaction.