Desirability is how much people want something: the pull it has on them beyond whether they strictly need it. Something desirable is worth having or wanting, and people will choose it, pay for it or wait for it when cheaper or easier options exist. In product design the word has a narrower meaning. It’s one of three tests a product idea has to pass, alongside feasibility (can we build it?) and viability (can it sustain a business?). Desirability asks whether the people it’s for actually want it.
Why do people want the things they want? I think about this more than I expected to. When I first wrote this I was working on a platform where people spent all day discussing cosmetics, and why one product got coveted while a nearly identical one sat ignored was basically the whole business. Taste is personal, sure, but the patterns underneath it are surprisingly consistent.
Desirability, feasibility and viability#
The three-lens version comes from design thinking, and it’s become a common way for product teams to check an idea before they commit to it. The useful part is that the three fail in different ways. A feasible, viable product nobody wants is the classic startup failure: well engineered, sensibly priced and ignored. A desirable product that can’t be built, or can’t make money, at least fails for a reason you can see coming.
Desirability is the one teams most often skip, because it’s the hardest to measure and the easiest to assume. Everyone on the team already wants the thing they’re building. That tells you nothing about anyone else.
The rest of this post is about what desirability is made of, and then how to check for it.
It has to work, and keep working#
Desire usually starts with plain usefulness: the kitchen gadget that genuinely saves you ten minutes, the phone that just keeps you connected. But utility on its own only gets you to “fine”. The things people actually covet do their job exceptionally well, and keep doing it. Quality and durability are what turn a purchase into a possession someone defends, like a classic car or a knife that outlives its owner. Nobody lusts after something they expect to break.
It has to make you feel something#
Aesthetics pull harder than we like to admit. The lines of a sports car or the plating of a good dish grab you before the rational part of the brain gets a vote. And the strongest wants are emotional ones: joy, nostalgia, belonging. A battered childhood toy fails every practical test and is still impossible to throw away. Personalisation feeds the same instinct. Something tailored to you feels like yours in a way the stock version never will.
Other people decide more than we’d like to think#
Desirability is partly a social construct. Trends, peer approval and cultural norms quietly steer what we want. Scarcity does too: limited editions, rare stones, one-off pieces. Rarity signals that wanting this thing puts you in a small club. Reputation then compounds everything. Glowing reviews and word of mouth make a thing feel safe to want. On that cosmetics platform I watched this loop run every single day: one well-liked reviewer, a short-run product, and a week later it was sold out.
The maths still has to work#
Price doesn’t kill desire, but a bad deal does. People happily pay a premium for luxury and still walk away from anything that feels like poor value for hard-earned money. And increasingly, values sit inside the same calculation. Whether something was made sustainably and ethically now moves it up or down the wish list for a lot of people. Me included.
How to test whether something is desirable#
The trap with desirability is that asking people directly doesn’t work. “Would you use this?” gets a polite yes from almost everyone, because saying yes costs nothing. The tests that work all ask people to give something up, like time, money, an email address or a habit, and watch whether they do.
Ask about the past, not the future. “Tell me about the last time you had this problem, and what you did about it” gets you real behaviour. If nobody can remember the last time, the problem isn’t painful enough to want a solution for.
Put up a fake door. A landing page, or a button in an existing product, for something that doesn’t exist yet, and count how many people click through or leave an email. It feels slightly cheeky, but it’s the cheapest honest signal there is. Be upfront on the other side of the door that it’s coming soon.
Ask for a commitment. A waitlist is weak, a pre-order or deposit is strong. People will sign up for anything, but they only pay for what they want.
For something people already use, ask how they’d feel if they could no longer use it. A common rule of thumb in product circles is that if around 40% of your users would be “very disappointed”, you’ve got something people genuinely want. It’s a crude measure, but it’s far better than asking people whether they like it.
And watch what people do rather than what they say. Which features get used a second time, which ones people come back to without a reminder, what they complain about when it breaks. Complaints are underrated here. Nobody complains about losing something they didn’t want.
Putting it together#
None of these traits carries a product on its own. But stack a few of them, so that it’s genuinely useful, well made, good to look at, a little scarce and vouched for by people you trust, and you get the things people queue for. Most of the rest is marketing.
In short#
Desirability is how much people want something, beyond whether they need it. In product terms it’s the “do people want this?” lens that sits alongside feasibility and viability. It comes from usefulness that lasts, an emotional or aesthetic pull, social proof and scarcity, and a price that feels fair. You can’t find it by asking people whether they’d use something. Test it by asking them to give up something real, and watch what they do.