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From: Secretary, ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <secretary**At_Symbol_Here**DCHAS.ORG>
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Personas vs. Jobs-to-Be-Done
Date: Aug 7, 2017 15:53 UTC
Reply-To:
ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety
In-Reply-To:
Summary: Jobs-to-be-done focus on user problems and needs, while well-executed personas include the same information and also add behavioral and attitudinal details.
Introduction
Personas have long been a useful tool in a user-centered design process; however, in recent years, jobs-to-be done, a new technique for focusing on customer needs, has been gaining steady prominence.
Definition: Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) is a framework based on the idea that whenever users â??hireâ?? (i.e., use) a product, they do it for a specific â??jobâ?? (i.e., to achieve a particular outcome). The set of â??jobsâ?? for the product amounts to a comprehensive list of user needs.
With the popularity of the JTBD paradigm, there are calls in some corners to abandon personas, suggesting that JTBD has emerged as a more useful technique. This point of view is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of personas as primarily demographic representations of users, missing the key behavioral considerations that are essential to good personas and that provide much needed guidance for interaction design and product strategy.
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