The second part of our interview with Bob Moesta discusses topics specific to start-ups. We look at how a start-up can apply these Jobs To Be Done thinking, why hypothetical feedback is useless, and why beta testing must also test for value. Part one of the interview was posted previous, and audio is available of the entire discussion (35 mins).
A recent post titled Focus on the Job, Not the Customer explored the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) method as a means of improving a product. Since then the idea seems to have caught on and has been explored on many different blogs, videos, podcasts and more. Bob Moesta has spent most of his career profiting off this style of designing and improving products, and now works with Professor Clay Christenson helping to develop an online course to help teach it to entrepreneurs. In addition, Bob applies JTBD directly through his company The Rewired Group.
I interviewed Bob earlier this month to ask specific questions about Jobs To Be Done. There’s audio of the entire interview, and I’ve transcribed the relevant pieces into two separate posts. This first one focuses on why this method is gaining such traction right now, how it works, and how to build a brand around a job to be done.
Two months ago, Darragh Curran tweeted to help us find a Senior Ruby Engineer. Today, we’re delighted to welcome him into exactly that position! He’ll be joining Des, Ciaran and Ben in our Dublin office. We’re thrilled!
Our goal with Intercom is to provide a product for every single web business to help them proactively build and manage relationships with their customers. We’ll help these businesses use great, personal, personalized customer service to turn their users into loyal, happy customers.
“Grandma’s rule” has a common meaning across countries & cultures. At a simple level it’s usually understood as “eat your carrots, then you can have dessert“. At a more abstract level it’s about priorities. Get the important stuff done first, the cool fun stuff can follow. It applies in all disciplines. Let’s see some examples.
The world of start-ups is obsessed with outliers. Companies who have achieved remarkable success through a combination of their activities. Such stories are great for inspiration as they encourage you to think big. For some people that means a billion users and global relevancy (like Facebook), for other folks it might mean millions and a great company culture (like 37Signals). Taking too much inspiration from these success stories leads you to confuse cause with effect.
There’s a difference between inspiration and imitation. Imitation rarely achieves results. Copying one aspect of a business ignores the context and the fit; both are essential for the feature to thrive.
Today marks Ben McRedmond‘s first day working with Intercom. We’re thrilled to have him on-board.
In Gimmicks and Patterns I wrote that new features either become table stakes, or are dismissed as being gimmicky. As some readers noted, this is a simplification of what happens. The Kano model shows exactly how the slide happens, and explains why any one particular feature or trait will never be a sustainable advantage.
Here’s how it works…
As the music companies found out, distribution is about ease of use. Actions that make products harder to buy and consume ultimately hurt sales. Actions that make it easier to buy products than to steal them improve sales.
Apple are the kings of amazing distribution. App stores are changing software. Many multi-million dollar companies have been created and sold in the past 5 years, all because Apple made it easy to sell software. Windows 8 and Android will be following suit, and going by any of the developers reports the days of downloading executables from a website are numbered. The best experience for the consumer wins. Again.
Personas are a tool for sharing a common vision of a target user with everyone on a project. When everyone knows the sort of end users being targetted it helps cut some unnecessary debates. A persona depicts what you need to know about a typical end-user of your application to make informed design decisions. There are a few guidelines about how best to create, present and use them. The following are two important ones.
Personas work well the userbase can be broken down into different types of users with different needs.
That’s not always the case.
