The Je Ne Sais Quoi of Desirability
By Mario Iannuzzi , Lead Design Researcher & Sandy Chahine , Experience Designer and Researcher
Truly successful products are revelled in as much as they are relied upon, sometimes making them feel like they’re woven into the fabric of the user’s life. But accomplishing this requires more than just building a product that people can use – it’s about building a product that people WANT to use. If you’re in the business of building things, you’ve probably asked yourself, “do people want or need what I’m building?” And this is a good question to ask – but desirability is more than just a box to be checked and forgotten.
Truly successful products are revelled in as much as they are relied upon, sometimes making them feel like they’re woven into the fabric of the user’s life. But accomplishing this requires more than just building a product that people can use – it’s about building a product that people WANT to use.?
If you’re in the business of building things, you’ve probably asked yourself, “do people want or need what I’m building?” And this is a good question to ask – but desirability is more than just a box to be checked and forgotten. Instead, it drives product development and flows throughout the PDLC (Product Development Life Cycle), giving it vigour and sustained relevance. Therefore, it needs to be continuously and iteratively revisited.?
In short, desirability is the?why?behind your product: the reason that it’s so valuable to your end user.
This is all well and good, except defining desirability – answering the question of?what people want (what they really really want)?can seem difficult or mysterious. Other aspects of product development – usability, viability, and feasibility – feel tangible, especially measured against a product that has achieved higher-fidelity definition. A person could feel pretty confident making decisions on these facts and data. However, measuring?desire?and getting numbers in hand to feel confident that a product or feature is something people will want to use is a much more difficult proposition. But not an impossible one.?
Desirability: what is it?
Having a solid definition of desirability is, in and of itself, a tool to use on any product build.
A desirable product first fulfills an unmet need, where someone uses something because it’s the right solution for a problem they have. It was Netflix vs Blockbuster in the late 2000s: once the world hit a certain point on the high-speed internet curve, it was way easier to stay home, browse the media select screen, and binge-watch movies and shows.
On the other hand, a desirable product also elicits the right emotional reaction so that a user prefers one product over another based on how they feel when they use it. To come back to our video streaming example – it’s the content library, interface, and vibe that’s behind why couples in their late 20s Netflix and chill, rather than Disney+ and chill. (For now, anyway.)
In other words, defining desirability boils down to this:
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First:?desirability as designing for needs
When there’s nothing but blue skies above, open road ahead, and stacks of empty napkins just begging for ideas to be scrawled on them, figuring out whether something is desirable means exploring the range of problems that you can solve for a user. Here, the question resembles?“what do people?want/need?”?more than?“do people want/need?this?”
Exploring desirability at this stage may involve more qualitative research. Desirability may not be about establishing user preference; you may not have built something that people do, or even could prefer yet. Designing for needs isn’t about eliminating one feature over another but rather establishing guardrails for product development that can keep you on the path circling ever closer to success.?
Kristann Orton, co-founder and CTO at 17ways sums it up like this:?“Desirability tests whether your innovation is solving the right customer problem,”?and you won’t find any disagreement from us.?
Second:?desirability as an emotional connection
As you move along the product development life cycle, pivoting and iteration get costlier. The way that desirability shapes later stages of development also begins to change. It becomes more and more important to start validating the answer that your product or features have for their intended audience. It also puts greater focus on designing for the emotional connection that prompts them to choose your product over others in-market, or preferring to let their need go unmet. Rather than generative exploration, desirability is a tool that can be used to narrow the scope and hone the investment of time and resources.
That all sounds great – but what would that look like??
In a follow-up article, we’re going to look at how desirability maps onto the PDLC, taking a deeper dive into what it looks like at different stages and how you can utilize this information to guide your build.?