Desirability, Feasibility, Viability: Assumption Mapping

A typical design thinking workshop should yield lots of amazing ideas and solutions but they aren’t always ideas which are desirable or feasible. I like to use Assumption Mapping to help determine the solutions which are viable solutions to begin to ideate.

Desirability vs. Feasibility vs. Viability

“What is now proved was once only imagined.” –William Blake

According to “The Three Lenses of Innovation” created by IDEO.

Here’s how to think about it; in order to run a successful business, we have to create something that is Desirable (people want it), Feasible (we can actually do it) and it has to be Viable (we don’t go broke).

We can’t afford to get any of these wrong.

Therefore, we need to examine our idea through each lens, to see how we’re going and what could be improved.

The Desirability lens asks you to look at your customer by asking the following questions.

• How do they hear about you?
• What brings them in the door?
• What keeps them coming back?
• Maybe you have a few different types of customers; can you articulate what each group finds most appealing?