Stop Building Products—Start Mapping Customer Jobs, Pains, and Gains First

Imagine you're tasked with helping a friend launch a tutoring service. Your first instinct might be to brainstorm app features, pricing, or lesson formats. But experience shows that projects built from guesses often flop. Instead, you sit beside a group of students and watch. Someone tugs at a hoodie, glancing nervously at grades on a screen. Someone else sighs about missed deadlines and losing track of assignments. Later, a student confesses that asking questions in class feels embarrassing—even more so than falling behind.

You jot down everything—tangible tasks like 'understand new math topics,' but also hidden jobs, such as 'avoid looking weak' or 'feel prepared when called on.' Small frustrations pop up: calculators running out of battery, confusing instructions, parents who don't get how the grading system works. On the gain side, students secretly love quick praise from teachers or those rare moments when an answer comes easily.

Instead of guessing which to fix first, you now have a board crowded with sticky notes mapped to real struggles and hopes. When you sort them, it turns out nobody cares about lesson length—but several rank 'feeling less anxious' and 'getting parents off their backs' at the very top. The path to value is suddenly clearer: if you design something that dissolves anxiety and gives students fast, believable wins, the rest is details.

Behavioral design tools like the Value Proposition Canvas aren’t about theory—they force you to observe close-up, prioritize what really matters, and avoid the common trap of letting personal bias or industry habits drive your solution. Deeply mapping customer jobs, pains, and gains sets a foundation for real impact.

To get results, start by picking a group you honestly want to help, and sketch out what their normal day really looks like. List out every single task, frustration, and small win—even tiny details that seem unimportant at first glance. Be generous: use sticky notes or an old notebook and don't worry about being artistic. When you've filled up a spread with jobs, pains, and gains, stop and sort them in order. Which matter most? You'll quickly see a few stand out. Let those priorities guide every other idea you have, and only then begin thinking about possible solutions or improvements.