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

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

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

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?
• Does the market want this idea?

The Feasibility lens focuses on the “back of house” aspects of your operation.

• What needs to go on behind the scenes in order to create the magic for your customer?
• Key staff members?
• A recognizable and trusted brand?
• Partnerships with industry leaders
• Can we deliver at scale?

The Viability lens is about the dollars.

• Where do they come from?
• Where do they get spent?
• What’s our breakeven point?
• Which of our customers are most profitable, and are we doing anything to pursue them?
• Is the idea profitable enough?

Assumption Mapping

According to the approach of Precoil CEO David Bland

“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.” –Peter F. Drucker

Assumption mapping is the practice of identifying the risky assumptions being made about a new product or service. The idea is to inform better products by understanding the assumptions being made about the desirability, feasibility, and viability of a new idea.

These assumptions are then plotted into four quadrants based on Known vs. Unkown and Important vs. Unimportant.

Those assumptions in the top right quadrant (unknown + important) should be evaluated further using value proposition testing. The top left quadrant (known + important) should be evaluated against your current roadmap and backlog. The bottom right (unknown + unimportant) assumptions should be lead to generating more information through user interviews or other testing methods. The bottom left quadrant (known + unimportant) should be deferred.

To understand the level of risk and uncertainty of your solution you need to ask: “What are all the things that need to be true for this idea to work?” This will allow you to identify all three types of hypotheses underlying a solution: desirability, feasibility, and viability.

At the end of the exercise it should be clear which ideas or solutions you will continue into ideation. Iteration is your friend when building this trifecta into your innovation process. At each iteration, testing for these three and adjusting your strategy will keep your solution or idea track.