Jobs, not demographics
Unit 3 of 8 · Lesson 1 of 3Index
Priya's sessions showed you where signup breaks. Now Maya asks a bigger question: who is Sona actually for? Marketing answers with a persona: “Ananya, 29, urban professional, loves brunch.” You have to build something on Monday, and this tells you nothing.
People hire products to get something done
A persona is not a brief
Age, city and a love of brunch describe a person. None of it tells you what to build on Monday.
People hire products
Nobody opens Sona because they are 29. They open it because something just happened, like payday, and they need it handled.
When, want, so that
Start with the moment, then what they are trying to do, then what counts as progress. The third part is where the value is, and the part people skip.
Your rival might be a notebook
Look at what people do today instead. For a money app that is often a notebook, a spreadsheet, or a friend who is good with money.
No quote, no job
Every job needs a sentence a real user said. If you cannot attach one, you made it up.
How McDonald's handled it
- The situation
McDonald's wanted to sell more milkshakes. Surveys led to better flavours and thicker shakes, and sales did not move.
- What they did
Clayton Christensen's team watched who actually bought them. Nearly half were sold before 8am, to people commuting alone. The job was a breakfast you can hold in one hand that lasts a long, boring drive. The competition was bananas and bagels.
- Why it matters to you
Sort people by job and your competition changes completely. Sort them by age and you polish the flavour of something nobody bought for its flavour.
Doing it with AI, and where it breaks
Give a model your support transcripts and ask for jobs in the when, want, so that format, one per transcript, each with the line that supports it.
It writes elegant jobs that no quote supports, because the format is easy to fill and hard to check. Delete every job without a real sentence attached. Usually that is half.
For each transcript below, write at most one job as: When [situation], I want to [motivation], so that [outcome]. Under it, quote the exact sentence that supports each of the three parts. If a part has no supporting sentence, write NO EVIDENCE instead of guessing.
Build it
Three jobs, each with a supporting quote and what users do today instead, plus a short case for the one Sona should build for.
Google SheetsA chat model
The worked solution
Stuck, or want to compare?
There is a worked solution. Try the build first. Reading it before you have attempted anything is the fastest way to learn nothing.
Checkpoint
If you did the build, these take two minutes. If you cannot answer one of them, that is the part to go back to.
Moving on marks this lesson complete. Finish the build first, it is the part that counts.