Analyzing Opportunities: The Three Essential Lenses

Charting a course following an innovation sprint can be challenging. It often requires reconciling diverse priorities and perspectives. In the worst cases, it can devolve into a tug-of-war between personal ambitions.

To address these challenges, it is essential to establish a framework that encourages setting aside individual interests and fosters a balanced approach to analyzing the opportunities you’ve uncovered. This framework should serve as a platform for stakeholders to engage in open conversation regarding their objectives and the potential impact of opportunities towards shared goals.

Towards that end, I have identified three key “clients” that all product and service innovation work is in service of: the user, the business and the brand.

Each of these “clients” have distinct needs and hold equal significance. I refer to these as the “three essential lenses” since as a designer, I try to see the world through each lens. Used systematically, they can help a group triangulate on the set of high value opportunities worth pursuing.

Let’s break them down —

The Three Essential Lenses

The User

The user represents our audience, customer, or any individual utilizing a product or service. As UX professionals, we dedicate considerable effort to understanding this perspective. When assessing an idea through this lens, we aim to determine, “Does this idea benefit the user?” Some of the questions we might explore under this lens include —

• Does the idea tackle a genuine user pain point?
• Does it streamline complexity for the user?
• Is the idea exciting to the user? Would they be eager to own it and recommend it to peers?

The Business

Business leaders are looking for ways to improve their businesses, and growth is often a key objective. By encouraging innovation sprints that generate high-impact ideas, business leaders can explore new avenues for growth and unlock new opportunities for their companies. High-impact ideas can take many different forms, from practical solutions such as streamlining processes to far-reaching initiatives like developing new customer value propositions or building internal competencies to enhance long-term competitiveness.

The critical question that needs to be answered under this lens is, “Which of our many ideas generated during an innovation sprint have the potential to make a significant impact on the business?” Some of the questions we typically investigate here are —

• Does this make great impact within a specific area of focus? For example, can it solve current or projected organizational pain points, and can it unblock or accelerate growth?
• Does the idea have the potential for monetization — would people exchange something of value for it?
• Is the idea authentic to the organization’s strategic positioning, and does it make sense to pursue it? In some cases, can this idea help accelerate an organization’s strategic repositioning?
• Does this idea require a minimum level of effort to achieve and are we well-positioned to pursue it; do we have the right resources and skills in place?
• Although an idea may require a significant effort to achieve, could pursuing it make an impact laterally across multiple areas of focus? By pursuing this, can we build efficiencies or capabilities in other areas that we’ll need to stay competitive into the future?

The Brand

It may seem odd to think of a brand as a “client,” but consider this: a brand is like a personality, complete with a persona, set of beliefs and vision for a better world. Although a brand and a business are synonymous in some ways, they have distinct voices and goals. While abusiness wants to grow revenue first and foremost, a brand also wants to self-actualize, expressing itself to its fullest potential. Sometimes these voices can be at odds or need to find common ground.

So, the critical question to ask here is “Does this idea align with the brand”? Some of the questions we typically investigate are —

• Does this idea bring to life features and services in alignment with our mission and vision? Does this progress us towards our core purpose?
• Does this idea resonate with our brand personality and values? Is it consistent with the brand’s character and the principles it stands for?
• Does this idea fit within our brand permission space? In other words, does this idea fit our brand’s existing image and reputation with our target audience?

By deeply considering these three perspectives, we as designers become holistically aligned with the organization. Evaluating ideas with stakeholders through these essential lenses promotes transparent dialogue and aligns interests towards the one true goal — maximizing positive impact.

Opportunity Evaluation Tool

In a previous article, I introduced the Integrated Experience Map. Developed over the course of innovation work for Google, Toyota Research Institute and Woven City, it is designed to inspire a wide array of blue-sky ideas. The Opportunity Evaluation Tool was created to help evaluate those ideas with a simple device centered around the three essential lenses.

Before using the tool, it‘s important to articulate opportunities in a concise and compelling manner that highlights the core idea and the primary benefits. As an illustration, consider the below idea for a hypothetical smart city initiative that aims to enhance the well-being of its inhabitants.

The tool is designed to assess potential opportunities such as these by scoring them against the three lenses to determine if they meet a minimum threshold indicating they are worth pursuing further. Each lens is evaluated by specific statements, and scores are assigned on a scale of 0 to 5, with 5 indicating a perfect alignment with the statement.

To complete the scoring process, relevant stakeholders from across the organization with the necessary knowledge should be consulted. Alternatively, individuals within the organization can be appointed to gather the data required for scoring.

Once initial scores have been captured, a stakeholder meeting is recommended to discuss scores in an honest and objective manner, allowing for adjustments to scores as decided by the group. This is a pivotal step in which stakeholders can harmonize their goals and stimulate cross-functional cooperation, frequently yielding positive outcomes that extend well beyond the scope of the immediate task.

The tool will tally the scores and indicate whether the opportunity meets the required threshold for further evaluation by turning the final score green. If it fails to meet threshold it will show a red score. In my template total scores can range from 11 to 55 points, with a minimum score of 35 required for the opportunity to proceed.

The 35 point threshold can be adjusted to match a groups appetite to either work with more opportunities in the next stage or apply a stronger filter early on. My perspective is that, while the scoring system is undoubtedly a valuable step forward, it’s crucial to keep the bigger picture in mind and avoid excessive over-analysis. Maintaining momentum is key to success in early stages of any innovation project, and this should be the priority. To emphasize momentum, I deliberately set the threshold for a passing idea at a little above fifty percent.

That’s it! Make a copy of the tool and try it out. You can adjust questions and the pass/fail threshold to match your engagement. But keep in mind, the tool is more than just a scoring system — it’s a way of thinking about opportunities and fostering cohesion across teams. By using the tool, you’ll benefit from transparent discussions and improved alignment among your teams.

Special thanks to Liya Safina who helped develop the Opportunity Analysis tool