UX, Jobs to Be Done, and Product Management
Some thoughts on UX and Product Management
The difference between UX and Product Management has confused me ever since Product Management really exploded as a job title. When I read Product Management job descriptions, I think, “that’s what I do, and I’m UX.” This isn’t the first time. I’ve been through this before. I was an IA, then they said what I did was UX or Content Strategy.
Call me whatever you want as long as you call me, amirite?
But I want to understand difference, so I know what teams might expect from me when I work with a Product Manager. Or, even more valuable, if you know the difference, it helps you focus on what jobs you should actually look for.
It confuses me (and others!) because UX and Product Management’s activities and responsibilities overlap with one another. Surprisingly, that big milkshake straw helps push aside some of the underbrush to reveal how UX and Product Management work together and why Jobs to Be Done reveal such critical information about your users.
Milkshakes and Monotony
Jeff’s photo references the famous milkshake in the seminal article about Jobs to Be Done by Clayton Christensen, “ Marketing Malpractice The Cause and the Cure”. You might recognize Christensen from his highly recommended books on Innovation, The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution.
In that article, Christensen and his co-authors, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall describe a researcher hired to research milkshakes. Sign me up, right? These are the researcher’s surprising results:
40% of all milk shakes were purchased in the early morning. Most often, these early-morning customers were alone; not buy anything else; and they consumed their shakes in their car…. Most bought it to do a similar job: They faced a long, boring commute and needed something to make the drive more interesting…. The milk shake, it turned out, did the job better than any [other food]. It took people 20 minutes to suck the viscous milk shake through the thin straw, addressing the boring commute problem.
- Harvard Business Review, December 2005
Now, I love milkshakes. They’re my comfort food on rough days and a celebratory…
