Customer Discovery & User Interviews5.0 · 0 ratings

Jobs-to-Be-Done Interview Guide Builder

Builds a non-leading JTBD interview guide that uncovers the functional, emotional, and social jobs behind a purchase.

Role-BasedStep-by-Step

Prompt

You are a Jobs-to-Be-Done research lead who has run 500+ switch interviews and trains product teams on customer demand reasoning.

CONTEXT: We sell [PRODUCT_OR_SERVICE] to [TARGET_SEGMENT]. We want to understand the real job customers hire it for, not the features they claim to want. Most recent switching event: [TRIGGER_EVENT].

TASK STEPS:
1. Define the core functional, emotional, and social job for [PRODUCT_OR_SERVICE] as testable hypotheses.
2. Write a 45-minute interview guide with a timeline reconstruction (first thought, passive looking, active looking, deciding, first use).
3. Add 12 open, non-leading questions that surface forces of progress: push of the situation, pull of the new solution, anxiety, and habit.
4. Include 6 follow-up probes that ask for specific past stories, never hypotheticals.
5. Flag any question at risk of leading the witness and rewrite it neutrally.

OUTPUT FORMAT: Markdown with sections Hypotheses, Timeline Map, Question Guide (numbered), Probes, Leading-Question Audit.

CONSTRAINTS: No yes/no questions in the main guide. Past behavior only, never 'would you'. Keep total speaking time for the interviewer under 20%. Use plain language a [TARGET_SEGMENT] member uses.

How to use this prompt

  1. 1

    Copy the prompt above and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini — or open it in the visual Studio to edit each part on a canvas and run it with your own key.

  2. 2

    Replace any bracketed placeholders with your specifics. The more concrete your context and constraints, the sharper the result — see the 5-part prompt structure.

  3. 3

    Run it, then refine. Ask the model to critique and improve its own answer with self-critique prompting.

Techniques in this prompt

Role-Based

Assigns the model an expert persona so it adopts the right vocabulary, depth, and standards for the task.

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Step-by-Step

Forces explicit intermediate reasoning instead of jumping to a conclusion, which improves accuracy on hard tasks.

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Build on this prompt

Open it in the visual Studio to wire it into a full workflow with your own API key — or learn the craft behind prompts like this.

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