Both Jobs to Be Done and Design Thinking are popular business frameworks for customer-driven innovation. But while they share a customer-centric mindset, they offer different lenses into the way customers think, act, and make decisions. Understanding the difference between Jobs to Be Done and Design Thinking can help you apply the right approach at the right time.

Jobs To Be Done: Focused on Purpose and Progress

The Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework starts by asking, "What is the customer trying to achieve?" It's less about who the customer is and more about what they are trying to accomplish in specific situations. The core idea is that people 'hire' products or services to help them make progress in their lives – these tasks are their 'jobs.'

For example, a busy commuter might "hire" a podcast to stay informed during their drive – not because they're a podcast listener demographically, but because they need to use time efficiently. Understanding that job reveals opportunities you might miss with traditional segmentation.

JTBD analysis typically uncovers:

• Functional goals (e.g., getting from A to B, saving time)
• Emotional drivers (feeling prepared, competent, confident)
• Contextual factors (when/where this need arises)

This makes the JTBD framework especially helpful for product development, messaging, and innovation strategy, aligning offerings directly with the progress customers desire.

Design Thinking: Empathy Leads the Way

Design Thinking takes a creative, problem-solving approach centered on empathy. It emphasizes understanding user pain points deeply, generating many potential solutions, and testing them iteratively. This process is often visualized in five Design Thinking stages:

1. Empathize – Learn about users and their experiences
2. Define – Reframe the problem based on insight
3. Ideate – Brainstorm a wide range of ideas
4. Prototype – Build quick drafts of solutions
5. Test – Collect feedback and iterate

This method encourages open exploration and uses rapid experimentation to uncover what resonates most with users. It's frequently used in user-centric design, service development, and customer experience improvement.

Key Differences at a Glance:

• JTBD focuses on underlying goals and behavioral motivation
• Design Thinking focuses on generating user-informed solutions through iteration
• JTBD identifies "what to solve"; Design Thinking explores "how to solve it"
• JTBD often precedes Design Thinking in a project timeline

At SIVO Insights, we believe both methods bring value – the key is understanding when and how to apply each one within your broader market research toolkit.

The Jobs to Be Done framework isn’t just a way to think – it’s a powerful decision tool for businesses looking to uncover unmet customer needs and align offerings with the realities of their audience. But when is JTBD the right fit for your challenge?

When You’re Looking for Deeper Customer Motivation

Businesses often focus on customer demographics or survey data, but JTBD digs deeper into the 'why' behind behavior. If you're trying to understand what really drives a customer's choice – beyond price, brand, or features – a JTBD approach helps surface motivations you can act on.

For example, if sales of a new fitness app are underperforming, traditional analysis might point to generic issues like competition or UI design. A JTBD lens could uncover a more human insight: users are trying to 'stay accountable' in a routine, not just track workouts. That opens the door for features like social challenges or reminder nudges.

When You Need to Innovate Around Customer Problems

One of the most powerful moments to apply JTBD is at the early stage of product development. Rather than starting with features or assumptions, it grounds your team in specific customer jobs that need better solutions. This is especially helpful when exploring white space or creating differentiation in crowded markets.

JTBD helps businesses:

• Identify opportunities for innovation outside of traditional categories
• Prioritize features that solve real needs
• Avoid building based on assumptions rather than evidence

Consider a fictional example: A kitchen appliance brand wants to grow in the breakfast category. JTBD research surfaces an unexpected job – young professionals wanting to 'feel in control of their morning.' This insight leads to a compact, mess-free smoothie system designed for speed and simplicity, not novelty or recipe depth.

When Messaging Needs to Speak to Real-Life Use Cases

JTBD doesn't stop at innovation – it can shape go-to-market strategies by ensuring messaging taps into real-world situations. Instead of promoting features, you're highlighting the outcomes customers desire, helping products feel more relevant and intuitive.

Even if you're not creating something new, aligning existing marketing with the correct customer jobs can improve resonance and engagement.

A Tool for Both Research and Strategy

JTBD is especially valuable when paired with other market research tools. When combined with qualitative exploration and behavioral data, it becomes a unifying framework for synthesizing insights across teams. It's particularly useful for:

• Customer segmentation based on needs and circumstances
• Opportunity sizing by looking at job frequency and market gaps
• Clarifying what outcomes your product must deliver to be "hired"

Whether you're launching a new product or optimizing an existing one, SIVO Insights often integrates JTBD into broader innovation strategy programs, providing clarity and confidence in early-stage decision-making. When grounded in real behavior and language, it becomes a compass for long-term business growth.

Design Thinking is widely recognized for its ability to spark innovation by putting people at the center of the creative process. Rather than beginning with a business problem or an assumed solution, Design Thinking starts with empathy – understanding what users truly need through observation, interviews, and interaction. This user-centric design approach encourages fresh thinking that’s rooted in real human experience.

The process typically moves through five stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. These Design Thinking stages help teams stay grounded in customer needs while rapidly exploring creative solutions. This structure allows space for iteration, encouraging teams to test and refine ideas before committing to final development.

Driving Innovation Through Empathy

Design Thinking enables product development and service innovation by shifting focus away from just feasibility and technical performance toward desirability. By observing how users interact with current products or services, companies can uncover unmet or overlooked needs. These insights often lead to breakthrough ideas that competitors may miss.

For example, a fictional fitness app company used Design Thinking methods to redefine their onboarding process. Rather than assuming users wanted more features, they spent time understanding first-time user frustrations. Empathy interviews revealed that most users dropped off during sign-up due to unclear navigation – a usability issue that wasn’t previously on their radar. A quick design sprint led to a streamlined onboarding experience, significantly improving retention.

Encouraging Risk-Taking and Fast Experimentation

Because Design Thinking promotes rapid prototyping and feedback loops, it supports innovation by reducing the fear of failure. Testing multiple ideas early lets teams learn what resonates with customers before committing to full-scale implementation – a valuable market research tool for de-risking big bets.

Compared to more analytical frameworks, Design Thinking emphasizes exploration and experimentation, creating room to imagine entirely new possibilities rather than incremental tweaks. It’s an ideal fit when businesses are trying to solve ambiguous challenges or reposition their brand based on evolving customer behavior.

Key Benefits of Design Thinking for Innovation Strategy:

• Encourages empathy-led insights and user-centric design
• Builds alignment across cross-functional teams through shared understanding of customer needs
• Supports rapid ideation and testing to refine ideas quickly
• Reduces the risk of product failure by validating desirability early
• Fosters a culture of creativity and continuous improvement

Overall, Design Thinking helps businesses move from assumption-based decisions to insight-driven creativity – unlocking innovation that’s human-first, scalable, and aligned with real-world needs.

Absolutely – Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) and Design Thinking are often positioned as competing methodologies, but in practice, they can complement each other extremely well. When used together, they offer a powerful combination of perspective and process, helping organizations better understand customer needs and design solutions that truly resonate.

JTBD Provides the 'Why'; Design Thinking Delivers the 'How'

The JTBD framework focuses on uncovering the underlying motivations that drive consumer behavior – identifying the functional, emotional, and social “jobs” that people are trying to get done in their lives. It answers the question: Why does a customer hire a product or service?

Design Thinking, on the other hand, provides a creative, user-centric method for discovering how to solve for those needs through experimentation and empathy. Combined, these two frameworks give you both clarity and execution – JTBD guides strategic direction, while Design Thinking unlocks innovative experiences that bring that strategy to life.

Think of JTBD as the lens that defines the customer’s ultimate goal, and Design Thinking as the toolkit that helps teams build towards it in fresh, meaningful ways.

For example, let’s take a fictional case of a home insurance company trying to appeal to first-time buyers. A JTBD analysis might reveal that customers aren’t just looking to buy insurance – they are trying to “feel confident and secure while entering a new life stage.” This higher-order job gives product teams a more emotionally resonant goal. From there, Design Thinking would help brainstorm, test, and refine ways to address that job – such as onboarding content, mobile tools, or proactive support – in a user-friendly and innovative manner.

Combining Strengths for Better Product Development

When market research teams integrate JTBD and Design Thinking, they benefit from both depth and agility. JTBD supplies the strategic foundation by framing opportunities in terms of desired outcomes. Design Thinking injects creativity and rapid iteration to bring those outcomes to life. This dual approach:

• Ensures customer issues are defined with more precision
• Balances analytical insight with human-centered design
• Supports both strategic planning and hands-on experimentation

In short, it’s not a question of JTBD vs Design Thinking for innovation – but a matter of using both intentionally. Together, they drive better business growth by aligning solutions with authentic needs, while fostering a culture of continuous learning and progress.

When it comes to driving innovation and addressing customer needs, there’s no one-size-fits-all framework. Understanding the difference between Jobs to Be Done and Design Thinking is just the beginning – the real value lies in selecting the method that fits your current challenges, resources, and goals.

When to Use Jobs to Be Done

The JTBD framework shines during the early phases of strategy development, such as identifying unmet needs or decoding why customers switch between products. If your business is:

• Trying to reposition a product based on changing customer behavior
• Evaluating new market opportunities
• Experiencing customer churn or declining loyalty
• Looking for deep motivational drivers behind decisions

...JTBD can help uncover hidden demand and reframe opportunities around real human goals. It’s particularly powerful in market research where the goal is to inform long-term product roadmaps or understand competitive threats from a customer perspective.

When to Use Design Thinking

Design Thinking becomes more effective when the goal shifts to ideating and testing solutions. If your business is:

• Designing new digital experiences, services, or customer journeys
• Running innovation workshops or internal sprints
• Improving usability or customer touchpoints
• Co-creating with users in rapid intervals

...Design Thinking’s flexible, iterative process supports quick experimentation grounded in empathy and insights. It’s a great fit for teams building prototypes or improving early-stage concepts.

Blending for Business Growth

Remember, choosing between Jobs to Be Done and Design Thinking doesn’t have to be binary. Many organizations use JTBD-informed insights to fuel Design Thinking workshops – turning strategic findings into tangible experiences. When integrated thoughtfully, they create a full-cycle innovation strategy: understand the deeper motivation, then design a smarter solution.

At the end of the day, both JTBD and Design Thinking are market research tools that put customers at the center – just from different angles. Choosing the right method depends on where you are in your journey, what kind of decisions you need to make, and how you want to bring customer understanding into action.