Spot the feature request in disguise
Twelve customer quotes, four lanes: functional job, emotional job, social job — and the red-herring lane for solutions dressed up as jobs. Most people catch about half the herrings. Can you do better?
“I need to know how much is left before payday without doing maths in my head.”
“Just add a pie chart of my spending by category.”
“Opening my banking app makes my chest tighten. I want checking my money to feel calm.”
9 more quotes waiting after these…
A practical task to get done
empty
How they want to feel
empty
How they want to be seen
empty
A solution in disguise
empty
The red-herring lane is the twist: most people sort the obvious jobs correctly, then get caught by a quote that looks like a job while really being a solution in disguise — and the reveal names the exact tell.
What is Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)?
It's the idea that customers 'hire' a product to make progress in a specific situation — the job — rather than to own features. 'I need to say yes to the trip without looking broke' is a job; 'add a pie chart' is not.
What's the difference between functional, emotional and social jobs?
Functional jobs are practical tasks to complete, emotional jobs are how someone wants to feel, and social jobs are how they want to be seen by others. One quote usually leads with one of the three — the skill is hearing which.
What is a feature request in disguise?
A quote that prescribes a solution — a widget, a chart, a mode — while the underlying struggle stays unstated. The tell is that it names the mechanism instead of the moment of struggle. Build it literally and you may solve nothing.
This playable is part of the registry: its tool page
Next: see what your words cost
The Tokenizer Lab shows the tokens a model actually reads — the unit every context window and API bill is counted in.