Evaluating a product idea with Design Compass means working through 19 criteria across three rings (Design for Market, Environmentally Sustainable, and Socially Responsible) to produce a scored, visual picture of where your idea is strong and where the real risks lie.
Design Compass gives you a systematic, repeatable way to evaluate any product idea across the commercial, environmental, and social dimensions that determine whether it is genuinely viable. This guide walks you through the process from first use to a completed evaluation.
Start with the Problem Statement
Before touching any of the 19 criteria, write a clear problem statement at the centre of your compass: who has the problem, what the problem is, and why existing solutions are insufficient. Everything else you evaluate should be anchored to this statement.
Use Learn to understand the methodology
Open the Learn tool and work through the three rings and their criteria. Read the explanation of each segment so you understand what it is asking and why it matters before you try to answer it. This takes 20 to 30 minutes and pays back in more honest, grounded scores later.
Use Generate to expand your thinking
Open Generate and review the prompts drawn from the 19 criteria. Note any that reveal a consideration you had not yet thought about, particularly in the Environmentally Sustainable and Socially Responsible rings, where blind spots are most common in early-stage product thinking.
Open Benchmark and rate each segment
In Benchmark, work through all 19 segments and assign an honest colour rating to each one. Do not optimise for a good-looking compass; an accurate picture of weaknesses is far more valuable than a flattering one. Where you are uncertain, use the Expert Chat personas to explore that segment further before rating it.
Use Expert Chat for your weakest segments
For each segment where your rating is low or your thinking is uncertain, open Expert Chat and consult the relevant persona. Ask specific questions about your product and the segment, not general questions about the topic. The answers will help you understand whether the weakness is a design challenge you can address or a fundamental problem with the concept.
Identify your three biggest risks
Look at your completed Benchmark compass and identify the three segments with the weakest ratings. These are the risks that need to be addressed before the concept is viable. Write a short note for each: what the weakness is, what would need to be true for it to become a strength, and how you would find out whether that is achievable.
Save your evaluation as a Project
Use the Projects tool to save your evaluation, giving it a version name and a brief description of the concept as it stands. This creates the baseline against which you will track future iterations as you address the weaknesses identified in the previous step.
