← Insights Unlocked
Insights Unlocked
Leverage the Jobs To Be Done framework to drive growth
00:40:05
Discover how Jim Kalbach uses Jobs to Be Done to align UX and business goals, drive growth, and leverage AI for smarter, customer-centric research.
Loading summary
Transcript59 lines
- [00:02]
Leah Hogan
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast.
- [00:04]
Aaron Diocampo
In this episode, we're joined by Jim.
- [00:06]
Leah Hogan
Callback, chief evangelist at Mural and author of the Jobs to Be Done Playbook.
- [00:11]
Aaron Diocampo
Jim chats with Leah Hogan about how.
- [00:14]
Leah Hogan
Reframing UX through the lens of customer needs can drive business growth and how.
- [00:20]
Aaron Diocampo
AI is reshaping research without replacing the human touch.
- [00:24]
Leah Hogan
Enjoy the show.
- [00:26]
Podcast Host
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing, where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.
- [00:46]
Aaron Diocampo
Welcome to the Insights Unlock podcast. I'm Aaron Diocampo, brand content production manager at UserTesting, and joining us today as host is UserTesting's Leah Hogan, principal for Experience Research Strategy. Welcome to the show, Leah.
- [01:00]
Jim Kalbach
Thank you so much, Aaron.
- [01:02]
Aaron Diocampo
And our guest today is Jim Kalbach, a leading expert in UX design strategy and customer experience. Jim is the chief Evangelist at Mural, where he helps organizations collaborate visually and think more strategically about design and innovation. He is also the author of several influential books including Mapping Experiences and the Jobs to Be Done Playbook. With a background spanning UX research, product design and business strategy, Jim has worked with companies of all sizes to create customer eccentric solutions. Today we're excited to dive deep into his insights on Jobs to Be Done, experience mapping, and how AI is shaping the future of research. Welcome to the show, Jim.
- [01:40]
Leah Hogan
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation.
- [01:44]
Jim Kalbach
Well, that's a great way to kick off the conversation because I'm even more excited to have this conversation. And first, really want to start with congratulating you on your recent 10 year anniversary at Mural, which, as we all know, with the speed at which things move in technology, that's a good long run. And you've had an incredible career that spans design and customer experience and business strategy and just like all the things. And so I kind of want to take you back actually, to start with what originally drew you into this space at the intersection of all of those different disciplines and then also just how has your perspective evolved over your time in this space?
- [02:36]
Leah Hogan
Yeah, great question. I think I'd have to go back to my studies at Rutgers University. I started with a degree in music, but then after graduating I went back to grad school and got a degree in information science. And that was at a time when the Internet was just coming around and email and things like that. So I got online at the time through Rutgers. Very early on I was surfing the web and I had an Email account back in the early 90s, and that got me really attuned to online experiences. But then I from there I moved to information architecture. So my information science degree set me squarely up for an information architect role, which of course includes usability in a lot of the things that we would call UX these days. And then I, you know, continued working in that field both internally and externally for large companies. On the one hand, you know, in a large product design team, but also as a consultant in a couple of roles externally for design and innovation projects and things like that. When I came to Mural, though, I took a sidestep and I actually then headed up what we called our customer experience team, and that included customer success, which is post sales account relationships, the support team, and our services team as well too, which has to do with experience. And I think that's the common thread going from UX to a more CX kind of thing. It's really about the customer and their experience. But the medium in which I was creating those experience changed from pixels and screens to enablement sessions and onboarding flows and things like that. And then in 2020, I became the chief evangelist here at Mural when the pandemic started. And it's an interesting role because I have kind of a helicopter view of things. And by that I mean I work with some of our biggest and best accounts, which puts me in touch with design teams of all kinds in all kinds of industries around the world. So although I'm not really practicing UX per se or design per se, I get to work with lots of teams in different situations. So that keeps me in touch with what's going on.
- [05:11]
Jim Kalbach
Yeah, I think that that is like the perfect blend of experiences to give you a lot of wisdom about, like how to do the work and why to do the work and how to make the business case to do the work. And so, you know, I think from there I just want to shift gears and talk about the fact that obviously you wrote a really, I think, helpful book around the Jobs To Be Done framework, and it's been around for a while, so I think you bring your own perspective to it. But I'd love to hear more about how you think that framework has evolved from its original evolution. Right. Or how it originally was envisioned to work and how it can be really leveraged in this very quickly changing business context.
- [06:04]
Leah Hogan
Yeah, sure. So I got in touch with Jobs To Be Done or I first came across the concept in about 2003 when a gentleman named, named Tony Ulwich wrote an article in The Harvard Business Review, I think it was turn customer input into innovation. And that was really when I started to get into his method in particular, which he calls odi, Outcome Driven innovation. Just prior to that though, Clayton Christensen, very famous business thought leader. Unfortunately he passed away a number of years ago, but he kind of coined the term or popularized the term in his follow up book to the innovator's dilemma, called the Innovator Solution. But if you look at, I mean, let's just start with from Clayton Christensen in the stratosphere in terms of business consulting and advice, right? You know, he would hobnob with the CEOs of the world's largest companies and talk strategy at that super, super high level. Right. And then even Tony Ulwich at Strategen with his odi, he was also leveraging some of the principles of Jobs to be done at a fairly strategic level. Thinking about how do you think about your market differently? And when I say markets, I mean like segmentation of your market and what's the overall value and value proposition at the highest level. Right. And since then there's been some other flavors and other practitioners, but for me, in 2003, kind of on the ground, in the middle of a design team, right, I was like, you know what? I think this can also help me and my team think through problem solving and designs and things like that. And I think it was that perspective that kind of comes out. I hope it comes out in my book. I'm not a consultant, so I don't go in and consult CEOs and give them a nice answer in a PowerPoint deck. I want to position and think about Jobs to be done as something anyone can use in part or in whole. It's almost a mindset that I want to be able to bring to literally everybody, right. So the evolution that I just painted is, you know, jobs to be done as a high level strategic notion from Tony, from Clayton Christensen to kind of. This strategic consulting model was very systematic and very, very rigorous. And for me, it's kind of bringing it down and saying, no, there's value in jobs to be done thinking that anybody can tap into and anybody can leverage even in just small ways through the course of their project development or whatever they're doing.
- [08:55]
Jim Kalbach
Yeah, and I think that's a really powerful concept because there's so much rigor in the ULWIC frameworks and just, you know, I see these beautifully constructed, like interview guides and scripts and research plans that come out of researchers, but there's also just the. You can listen to People piece that I think is really powerful for folks and very common sense.
- [09:23]
Leah Hogan
The other thing about jobs to be done too is coming from human centered design and design thinking and ux. It's very hard at times for designers and design teams to catch the ear of stakeholders or to get the proverbial seat at the table that we always talk about. And the thing for jobs to be done for me is that it not only resonated to me as a human centered designer, it's like, wow, this is exactly my thinking, but you know, on steroids. I also found out that it appealed to stakeholders in a different way because it came from the design. It didn't come from the design community, it came from the business community. And there's Harvard Business Review articles on this stuff. Right. And even though under, underneath, right. It's really about we provide value to human beings who need, need, have needs. Right. That's what UX is about. That's what customer experience is about. If you boil it down to that, it's the same thing underneath. I think the framing of it through the jobs to be done lens actually helped me, I don't want to say push my agenda because it wasn't an agenda, but you know, bring the cause of customer centricity, bring new light to the cause of customer centricity. So jobs to be done, you know, help me get a seat at the table or as I like to say, help me get a customer the seat at the table. Because I don't want a seat at the table, I want the customer to have a seat at the table.
- [10:56]
Jim Kalbach
Yeah, well, you know, that's a really great point because that's obviously something that a lot of teams in UX and Design are really struggling with right now. Like how do we get the buy in and the ear of our business partners to just give us the time and the space to say there's another perspective outside the room that should hear. So what I think, and this is a little bit of a different question, so you say that you do that, but how do you do that? Like how do you connect to that? Very visceral, like I understand, yes, you.
- [11:29]
Leah Hogan
Know, as a business, I think, you know, just, just sticking with jobs to be done for a second. I think it's. For me there's a couple of tactics there. One is to find a business stakeholder as high level as you can who not only gets jobs to be done, but would be willing to be a kind of a champion for it. And that's what happened to me early in my Career, particularly around mapping and mapping experiences. I had high level support and doors got open that way because it's always nice to have a little bit of weight behind your motions and your decisions from above, but also getting, getting a proof point, get a case study together that you can say, hey, we did this and show that around, right? So, and again, I think the jobs to be done, label and positioning and posture helped with all of those things as well. But I also think it's about having more empathy for our business stakeholders. Right? And this sounds weird because designers are all about empathy and we have empathy maps and all that kind of stuff is like, yeah, point that stuff back at your business. And I was the angry UX designer, you know, why don't they get it? And it was us and them, right? It was the turtlenecks in the suits and they don't get it, right? It's like drop that division in your mind and say they do know things that you don't know and there are business things that you need to learn and their motivations are different. Go understand those motivations and apply design thinking or whatever methodology you want to think to about to your own teams and your own stakeholders. And the one thing that I learned moving to the Go to Market site here at Mural, you know, post sales, customer relationships and things like that is just as a really kind of high level tip. Is growth. The word growth, the idea of growth, if I were to go back and redo my UX career over, I would be using the word growth like punctuation. Because very often UX and usability and things like that are positioned as cost savings and friction savings and customer experience, right? Either we'll reduce the number of calls to the call center. That's money, right? So invest in us and you'll save more money. Right? Or customer satisfaction is better. That saves you money. If you flip the script and say we'll earn you more money and make a revenue generator out of ux. However, you need to argue that that's a more powerful argument because most business leaders will say we grow through more sales and marketing. Those are revenue generators. And why? Because they want to grow. And there's a belief in the business mindset that growth comes through sales or marketing, not from ux. I disagree. And of course now we have product LED growth and all these other things, right? And I think it's about making that case of how does UX and design and research not just save costs and save friction and bad experiences? How does it drive growth for the business and I would just start using that word all over the place.
- [14:41]
Jim Kalbach
I think you just like, if all people do is just listen to this far into the podcast, people come away with a really powerful piece because I think a lot of what it is that we do is speak about risk and how we can de risk or create.
- [14:58]
Leah Hogan
That's right.
- [14:58]
Jim Kalbach
You know, space.
- [14:59]
Leah Hogan
That's right.
- [15:00]
Jim Kalbach
Ensure that you can optimize the time that you're spending to, you know, not rework something. But that growth piece is where product teams and other teams are. And business people really do understand that revenue side.
- [15:13]
Leah Hogan
Exactly. It's a powerful shift. Yeah. De risking is preventing risk or incurring costs. Preventing incurring costs. If you flip the script to we're going to make you more money. Right. And you can argue that somehow. Right. You know who does that really well? AB testing. The AB testing group. You know, the statistical A B testing group. They're really good at that because they'll say, I will tell you which workflow, which experience will generate you more revenue. Right. And it's those types of arguments that I think the UX field in general has not embraced or really like, we really got to dive deep and find what are those things where it's growth and flip the script from we'll de risk and we'll save you money to we're a revenue generator as well.
- [16:03]
Jim Kalbach
Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's so powerful.
- [16:06]
Leah Hogan
Yeah.
- [16:07]
Jim Kalbach
Thank you for sharing.
- [16:08]
Leah Hogan
Yeah, sure.
- [16:10]
Jim Kalbach
Well, you know, to that end, I guess what is. What are some of the ways that you can use jobs to be done.
- [16:16]
Leah Hogan
Yeah.
- [16:17]
Jim Kalbach
To flip that script. And so like, how do we grow revenue? How do we open up new markets? How do we, like, how do we grow our business?
- [16:27]
Leah Hogan
Yeah, sure. Well, I'm an innovation diffusionist. I don't know if that's a word, but I actually got introduced to human centered design and human centered innovation through Everett Rogers, and he wrote a book called the Diffusions of Innovation. It's the most famous book that nobody knows about. That's the way I like to describe it because we all know some of his theories from there. And the one theory is the innovation adoption curve. You know, the innovators, the laggers, the middle majority. That's from Everett Rogers. And in that book, and when I was at information school, we had to read that. And that's where I really started to think, wow, it's all about the human. And that's what made me human centered. The reason why I mentioned that is because his book is a humanistic way to look at adoption of innovation. Why do human beings, the people that you serve, why do they adopt one solution over another? And what is that adoption process? For me, jobs to be done is a way to help a commercial organization predict adoption, which is not sales. It's not about demand generation. Sales is transactional. It's about, okay, I bought this thing. That's only part of the story. It's not an insignificant part of the story, but that's only part of the story. What we really want to do as service providers and innovations is have something that people adopt and pull into their lives and go, how did you know I needed this? Thank you so much. That's where you get brand loyalty, that's where you get customer response. And the way that, the way that we say that these days is product market fit. And product market fit is about revenue generating, right? You want to generate more revenue, you need better product market fit. Jobs to be done can help you predict what those pull factors are going to be. And in the jobs to be done theory, it basically states that people pull solutions into their lives that get a job done better than other solutions. Right? So therefore you. If we can study the job to be done in an abstract way, because the job is not using your product. The job is a goal that somebody has independent of your. So this is really human behavior, right? Who better to talk about human behavior than UX people and user researchers, right? So you can take all that goodness that you know as a UX researcher and point it at adoption in a business context and say, I'll make you more revenue by creating market pull. So that's a little bit theoretical, but I hope that answered your question.
- [19:05]
Jim Kalbach
I actually think that's very practical. Yeah.
- [19:07]
Leah Hogan
Okay, good.
- [19:08]
Jim Kalbach
It says that. I'm like, oh, I wish I had assigned that book to you. But I mean, I think it actually makes a lot of sense because it really is the simple question when you're out working with people, just understanding what are the problems that they're trying to solve and how can we create a solution that is like priced appropriately, positioned appropriately delivered in the right way that is going to drive value for the customers and thereby help out drive value as a business?
- [19:41]
Leah Hogan
Yeah, but it's all, it's, you know, it's all about starting with the solution, working back, because typically what we do is, I'm just going to oversimplify here. Okay, guys, we have a technology or solution that we're passionate with and then we bundle that up into an offering and then we scratch our head and say, how Much are we going to charge for this? Right? And then we increase marketing and sales to push that on the market and generate demand, right? If you flip that script and say, what is the need? That if we fulfill that there will be adoption. And then you work backwards through all of those motions. It's a different thought process and mindset shift. And what that does, it makes your sales easier, it makes your marketing easier. Right? Because very often we've seen it before and this is why startups fail. And I encourage everybody right now to go, Google, why do startups fail? If you're listening to me, Google, why do startups fail? I guarantee out of the top 10, because there's all these top 10 lists out there in the top three, one of them, one answer in the top three will be, we didn't understand the market needs. Right? And then you see this all the time where people, you know, startup or whatever comes out with a product and then they push the gas with sales and marketing and they're pushing it up against a lethargic market because there's no pull and they're really trying to push it. What you want is product, market fit. So that all of those motions are much easier. Don't solve it at the point of sales and marketing, solve it at the point of we met a job to be done and we have natural adoption in the market place.
- [21:20]
Jim Kalbach
Oh, I love it, that's gold.
- [21:23]
Leah Hogan
But you know, any UX designer or researcher listening, they'll go, they'll, they'll know what I mean. Oh yeah, I can, I can imagine how I would do that. Right? It's, that's not a mystery for us.
- [21:36]
Jim Kalbach
It's not a mystery for us, but I think it's getting people to slow down enough to say like, we have to flip the script if we want to be successful. And it's like getting people to really buy into that. We're going to make more money, we're going to do it more easily if we do it this way.
- [21:57]
Leah Hogan
No, I agree. And I just asked this question two days ago when I was presenting to a customer. Have you ever been on a project and three months in or six months in, you and your team are scratching your head going, why are we doing this? And everybody laughed and the laugh was basically, yeah, we've all worked on those types of projects before. And for me, the thing that job doing jobs to be done up front, it provides a very strong rationale, customer centric rationale for what you're doing and why you're doing it. And it Allows teams to focus on the right things for the right reasons. Right. Because I've never worked for or with an organization that lacks ideas. This is another question I ask, is it the problem is your company's problem. You don't have any ideas. You're just sitting there going, I wish I had an idea. It's usually the opposite. You have a backlog. I mean, that's the definition of a backlog. You have a backlog of ideas and everybody at happy hour solves their company's problems. We should be doing. There's ideas swimming around any organization at any one point in time. The question is, which should we do? And very often we bring a logic to prioritize those ideas that are based on finance or technology or stakeholder preference or some thin data points. Right. And it's like when I said bring the customer to the table, I want to bring the customer that prioritization table. And that's what jobs to be done can help you do. Because it's generally very far up front. Once you have signal on the job to be done and the unmet need using something as sophisticated as ODI or even a lighter version like I teach you can then say, okay, maybe we should use this as the reason to prioritize the backlog. And the reason is so that we have better market adoption and the throughput of sales and all the other things that need to happen is so much easier. That's actually a. That saves you time and money. Right. Think all the churn and project turnover and stops and starts and do overs and product launch failures that the company has. And it's like, you'll probably still have those, because jobs to be done doesn't eliminate it, but it reduces the chance of those types of things happening. Yeah, and that goes, you know, I don't, I know I'm, I'm talking to the choir here, but it goes back to what does the human being, the individual that you're trying to serve, what do they need and find that and fulfill that need and all the other things fall into place so much easier.
- [24:32]
Jim Kalbach
True, very true. Well, shifting gears just a little bit because I think this is a, you know, something that's on everybody's mind. But, you know, I think one of the things that we're all trying to figure out is how do we use artificial intelligence in this world where we're trying to really like draw the line between how much we automate what it is that we do versus where it is that we make sure that we're bringing a human Perspective either to the work or to the participants. I know this is a lot more controversial. Not in my mind it's not controversial, but I think it's a controversial topic. So what are your thoughts around that?
- [25:19]
Leah Hogan
Yeah, I have two larger thoughts. The one is maybe this will happen sooner than later, but at least right now, the way that I think about AI and use AI, it's not about automating or it's not about giving up a complete task or use case or scenario to AI. For me, it's a much more fuzzier, jagged line of I'm doing the research and you dip in and out of AI as you need to, but you're still the driver. So it's not like I'm going to throw this over the fence to AI. It's like, no, I'm going to use AI to power up my human abilities and make me a better human, but make me a better researcher. Right? So that. So that's the one thing I don't think about giving something over to AI wholesale, but from a jobs to be done perspective. From my experience, jobs to be done works really well with AI because it's solution agnostic and you're talking about general human behaviors and the way that large language models work and the way that they ingest and query and use the data that they have access to. It is about looking broadly and at a more universal way of behavior. So therefore, asking AI how do people use usertesting.com is very different than how do you conduct a usability test? Right? Because the one is with a specific solution and the other one isn't. And by being not solution independent, it actually produces fairly good results. Into the AI frameworks, I have a lightweight framework. We create a job map and have some success criteria that you list and things like that. And AI can be really help in helping you generate those things. And I've actually changed my process for doing jobs to be done away from, you know, define your research focus and then go out and talk to people to design your research focus and then do create a hypothesis, right? And you can use AI to create that hypothesis so that you're not going out to the field. You know, you got 12 interviews to do. And on interview one you have a blank page of paper, but you have a job map. It's only an assumption, but you have that. And you might even have a list of success criteria and the emotions and the other elements of the jobs to be done framework. So you're actually going out in the field and you're Validating that and completing it. But what that allows you to do two things. It makes you a smarter researcher, particularly if you're working in a field that is foreign to you. It's easy for us to talk about shopping or groceries or something like that, or going to the movies, because we've all done those types of things. But what if you're in a B2B situation and you're working with technicians on an oil rig platform? It's like, how do I talk to these people? If you have a hypothesis and AI can help you create that hypothesis, you go out into the field, not only more informed, but you might actually have something to show them, like a job map in the jobs to be done vernacular and say, is this what you do here? Move these stickies around, change this for me. Put a star on the one that's the hardest for you to do. And you can actually go deeper because you're not creating that model from a blank piece of paper. You're validating it and then you have more time to go and find where the problems are. That's generally how I think about AI, But I would never recommend not talking to human beings. You can go out and be a smarter researcher and you might reduce your sample sizes as well too. Right. Because you're really just validating and you might get it. You might get the confidence around validation after six interviews instead of 12. So you might reduce your sample size. But if we're trying to be customer centric and empathize and trying to have an organizational intuition around customer needs and you're never going out and talking to customers, that's remiss to talk about customer centricity and user needs and. Yeah, but we don't have to talk to a customer. That just doesn't compute in my mind. I don't know. So again, AI is a supplement. It complements your skills and it makes, it powers you up. It makes you smarter, I believe.
- [29:40]
Jim Kalbach
Yeah. I just want to throw one thing in there. So, you know, a lot of the folks that I've been talking to have been saying I want to talk to more people now.
- [29:49]
Leah Hogan
Yes.
- [29:49]
Jim Kalbach
Because the capabilities of the platforms that are out there. So I'm curious, you know, you may, you know, you made the point. You may talk to fewer people, but what if you talk to more people? And how do you that play?
- [30:04]
Leah Hogan
It might help you talk to more people. Because now I'm not starting from a blank page. And though. And each interview might be shorter or more focused. Right. Because of that, you know what I like to think about not necessarily increasing your sample size per research project, but now I can do more research projects. That, that's, that's what I like to think about is how does, and I'm probably just, I'm increasing the, the, the workload of researchers here. But you know, how do you go from being able to manage, you know, a handful of projects to 10 projects at once? Right. And being able to do those with, with some kind of confidence. And I know there's logistics and things like that. So it's not a, it's not a one to one relationship there. But in most companies that I've ever worked for before, user research was only done on a fraction of the efforts and projects and initiatives. We don't have enough user researchers and it's not value. All those things are true. But I think AI can help bring customer centricity to more points inside of the organization and more projects inside the organization. That's my hope.
- [31:15]
Jim Kalbach
Yeah, I love that point. That's a really great one to keep in mind. It doesn't have to be more people per, it can be just more.
- [31:23]
Leah Hogan
Yeah, right. I think so. I think organizations need that. And then maybe that makes the researcher more valuable too. Again, you might be doing more guys, sorry about that, but you know, you won't be expendable. I don't think so ever at AI. For me, a user researcher, you can never just do it with AI. Of course I'm saying that now in five years somebody's going to play me that clip of me saying never. I just use the word never, which is dangerous. And somebody's going to be playing that and go, Jim said never five years ago.
- [31:56]
Jim Kalbach
Yeah, it's five years ago. The world changes. But I would hope that we stay human focused. Never becomes the case.
- [32:04]
Leah Hogan
See, right now I can't imagine myself not ever saying that you got to go out and talk to human beings. And you've been there too. You know, when you enter somebody else's space, even if it's on zoom, you're kind of entering and you have this, you get present to them and just that humanness. Yeah. You're taking notes and writing a research report. But there's this, there's this contextual, rich contextual bubble that you enter which you can't replace. That in my opinion.
- [32:35]
Jim Kalbach
Yeah, that's so true. So I have to say so before we wrap for the day, I do have one last question that is really around kind of that look ahead. Right. So you just said, I hope we never get to the point where people are totally removed. I don't think we're going to get there for many reasons. So are there any additional emerging trends that you see that are really shaping that I guess nearer future of UX research, but also like customer experience piece that you.
- [33:09]
Leah Hogan
Yeah, you know, I think, you know, when I wrote mapping experiences in 2016, the question was, what the heck's a journey map and how do I create it? I don't get that question anymore. In fact, there's probably a proliferation of journey maps and people got them lying around and they don't know what to do with them. That's more of the problem. And you know what, what I'm trying to show now is that just stick with journey maps for a second. That workflow diagram, experience map, service blueprint, whatever you want to call it, that those artifacts, they don't provide value to the organization. They're not something you can sell or the customers don't see those. They're really internal artifacts and their main purpose is collaboration. Yeah, it's a diagnostic tool and there might be some diagnosis you can make and come with a conclusion, but those are usually fairly weak, at least from a journey map. The real power of a journey map is around bringing the hearts and minds of the people around you together. Right? So we talk about getting this outside in perspective, right? We got to see things through the view of the customer. And that's super important. Right. And journey maps and jobs to be done, help you do that, get that, assume that outside in perspective. But the next step is what I call inside across alignment, that you got to get the hearts and minds of all the people who create the experience that you want aligned as well too. Because it's not enough that a UX researcher has that experience of the contextual bubble that I mentioned. I love being in that contextual bubble of the customer there. But that's a privileged position. Most people in your organization don't have that. And when we lament the fact that others in our organization don't have empathy for the customer and the customer experience, I think it's our job to show them that. Right. And thinking about things like Personas and empathy maps and journey maps as a catalyst for a conversation that we have to lead and that we have to bring that message to them. And I know people are already doing that. I'm not saying it's not happening, but what I see in the future. Oh, the other thing that I've seen since I written, wrote my book is that stakeholders and others outside of UX are aware of Personas and journey maps and they're asking for those things as well too. So I think it's a matter of two things. One is looking closer at what UX people do, what we do as the basis of collaboration. And we need to think more about the usability of our own stuff. And our users, by the way, are the teams around us and the business stakeholders again. And it's, you know, packaging things up with this growth mindset and all those kinds of things. But how do I bring people into a conversation that doesn't necessarily attempt to, you know, hit them over the head with an, an answer, but through persuasion leads them to the proverbial water hole, right, so that they can drink on their own. And then, you know, so I think it's also then an extension of that then is actually enabling more people to not necessarily be researchers, but to be involved in that type of mindset to, to, you know, again, it's not everyone is not a designer and everyone is not a user researcher. Those specialties we still need. But the mindsets can be imparted on others as well too. So one of the futures for UX that I see is actually enabling the entire organization to be more human centric and to be more willing to adopt exploratory ways of working, to adopt ways of working that are inclusive and creative and human centered. I think that's a role of ux and I'll just end here. UX for me filled a gap in a lot of organizations that probably shouldn't have ever been there, right. If business stakeholders and PMs and all the people who make decisions around us, if they were really, really focused on the customer and creating customer value, we wouldn't have had that void that UX filled. And I think it's okay that they're hearing these terms and maybe using them wrong, but that's up to us to educate and enable all of those. So for me, the ideal future of UX would be that it would pretty much just go away and we'd only be left with a handful of specialists like interaction and product designers or field researchers. Right? But UX is something that everybody owns and I think we win if that's the case.
- [37:51]
Jim Kalbach
Wow, that's a powerful point. So I will leave the conversation there because we could go on for another hour about that one alone. It's great, but thank you so much. I think the conversation was very thought provoking for me and I'm sure it will be for those who are listening in as well. And you know, obviously I want to make sure that people have a chance to continue the conversation, you know, with you. So how does, you know, how does our audience learn more about you and what you've been doing at Mural and some of your other thought leadership?
- [38:24]
Leah Hogan
And please, please reach out to me. I love having these, these conversations. I warned you that I was going to give long answers here. So. All right, I think I lived up to my promise there. But I'm out on LinkedIn quite a bit, so you can find me pretty easily on LinkedIn. I like to connect with people out on LinkedIn and then, you know, you can jump in on a post that I have and comment or loop me into your post. I like to jump over and comment there so we can keep the conversation going. But otherwise. After I launched the Jobs To Be Done Playbook, I created an online resource called the Jobs to Be done toolkit. That's jtbdtoolkit.com and we have some free materials there. We have a video course every once in a while. We do a live training. We also do like a monthly meetup webinar. If you're interested in Jobs to be Done, you'll find that all over at the Jobs to Be Done Toolkit. So I think one of those or both of those things, I would recommend LinkedIn and the jobs to Be Done Toolkit.
- [39:24]
Jim Kalbach
Awesome. Wonderful. Well, thank you again so much and we'll close here for the day.
- [39:30]
Leah Hogan
Thanks for having me, guys. It was great.
- [39:33]
Podcast Host
Want to keep the conversation going? You can find the show notes@usertesting.com podcast if you haven't already, don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast or Google Play so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with a friend or leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcast. And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing.