Hitting the Ground Running with Our User Job Cards
Building a product means making hard, but hopefully, data-driven decisions. Because the goal is always to improve user experience, we believe in a holistic approach to the discovery process.
What does this mean in practice?
It means defining and combining two important concepts in the product-building sphere: user jobs and user journey mapping.
The two are interconnected because when we’re trying to help the user complete a single job, we also have to understand the different journeys that could take them there.
But before we can describe the steps of the user’s journey and eliminate any pains they’re running into, it’s our task to identify and rank user jobs.
While it can be fun, it’s not always an easy task. Fortunately, the right resource, like our User Job Cards, can set you up for success.
Check out our User Job Cards here.
What the Heck Are User Job Cards?
User job cards deliver the answer to all of your product-building prayers. Just kidding. But they are pretty cool and we’ll show you why. Before you can map an entire user journey, you must single out and correctly identify user jobs.
With some projects this comes easier, with others, it’s a major chore. Either way, recognizing user jobs is the essential element we build on. With user job cards, teams can go through this process without skipping a beat. Even more importantly, they can better align with customers’ needs and avoid building the wrong thing.
How Do They Work?
The beauty of user job cards is that they’re easy to use. They push the team in the same direction as they’re mapping the user journey by ensuring the right questions are asked.
The best way to illustrate how user job cards work is to give you an example. Let’s say the user is a travel enthusiast who wants to book a flight for a short city getaway trip. That’s the job they are trying to accomplish.
🎯 User Goals
What is their primary objective when booking a flight? If we put ourselves in the user’s shoes, we can maybe say:
“By booking this city getaway trip, I will finally get to recharge and explore a new culture.”
User job cards can help you identify secondary goals as well. Maybe the person wants to practice a foreign language or learn more about local cuisine. This approach allows you to have a better understanding of the user job itself and how one action can achieve more than one goal.
🚨 Triggers
Pinning down user jobs includes considering triggers. What is the “activation moment” that prompts our user to book the flight for their getaway?
- Is there an upcoming holiday break they can extend without using much of their PTO?
- Are they completely burned out at work and need a meaningful change in the environment?
- Is there a major event in the city the user might not want to miss?
It’s important to consider any and all events and circumstances that may serve as a trigger for the user job. Also, keep in mind that this is where customer segmentation is essential. Otherwise, you’re off to a bad start.
🪂 Context
Here we obtain even more information about the user's emotional, social, and environmental context. In practice, that means asking questions such as:
- How often do they travel in the first place?
- Are they looking for a first-class ticket or a low-cost flight?
- Are they traveling alone or with friends/partners?
Without the right context, it’s difficult to fully comprehend the user journey, so it’s crucial to take in as many inputs that extend its boundaries.
🤗 Effects After Job Completion
In this section, we consider the upshot of a job done. What are the notable impacts and changes the user experiences after they complete the job? Note that it’s not just about positive effects, but also neutral and negative.
Positive: Mental Shift: Going from burnt out to hopeful and excited for the adventure ahead
Neutral: Planning the trip details, like finding budget-friendly activities and places to eat
Negative: Stress from budgeting constraints and planning the itinerary.
Discussing the effects after job completion provides a more holistic view of the entire lifecycle.
By doing so, we can make smarter suggestions when it comes to specific functionalities of the product. Ultimately, we want the user to have an even better experience when booking their next flight.
Satisfaction vs Importance
Finally, our task is to assess the value and importance of each user job and see how it compares to others we’ve identified.
The point here is to streamline the efforts and firstly focus on user jobs with high importance but low satisfaction scores. With a simple scale, we can address these two categories and get a clearer picture.
It’s About (User Journey) Not the Destination
To fully utilize our user job cards and make an undeniable connection with user jobs and user journeys, it’s vital to understand the importance of mapping. Why are they so vital when it comes to the decision-making process?
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Essentially, a user journey map exists to help us properly acknowledge and empathize with the user (customer.) That may seem overly simplistic, but it’s also very true. Creating a user journey means identifying different paths users take to complete a single job and elaborating on them. There’s a reason we take this approach in our discovery process - it works.
In fact, when done correctly, user journey mapping offers several fantastic benefits. Here are only a few reasons why being the guardians of the user journey is so important to us.
👉 To Challenge Our Assumptions
You have to walk a mile in your customers’ shoes. Undoubtedly, you’ve heard this before. When building your product, we always have to remind ourselves to see it from the user's perspective.
But it can be surprisingly challenging to reeeeally empathize with the user’s experience. Indeed, as we map user journeys, we often discover that users don’t think, or act, the way we expect.
👉 To Turn Feelings into Tangible Data
It may sound a touch cheesy, but having insight into the user's emotions, and acting on them, is enormously helpful when building your product. We all know people are emotional, even about the most random of things.
We also know that feelings are notoriously difficult to quantify. Still, a super-researched user journey map will open the door and let you peek into those emotional drivers.
👉 To Identify Unmet Needs
Do you want to buy a coffee machine, or do you want to have a delicious cup of coffee in the morning? Which of the two is an unmet need?
These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves when mapping user journeys. If we need to understand how the customer navigates your product, we need to consider frustrations, roadblockers, and dig deep into the problem the user is trying to solve.
Before Focusing on “How” Consider the “Why”
All product-building teams have the same goal - to create user journeys free from frustrations. Still, many fail due to a lack of alignment or iteration. But also, because they focus too much on how the user does something and less on why they do it. Mapping user journeys on real data and user feedback is far more important than relying on our assumptions.
User interviews, surveys, and other tools help us get behind the “why.” Finding out the real reasons for people’s actions is at the core of improving user experience and with our user job cards, we’re able to engage in continuous discovery and always add more value to users’ needs.
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