Why We Removed “Unmet” From Desires

The first version of this article referenced desires as “unmet desires”

After more work and feedback from model consumers and the community, we’ve opted to remove the “unmet” qualifier.

Why?

Initially, we worded “Desires” as “Desires”; however, we noticed that model users were getting confused. They were inputting many desirable aspects of the future state associated with the Job to be Done. This led to false conclusions.

To fix this, we decided to add the qualifier “unmet” to make it explicit that the desire was not being satisfied.

However, now we’ve adjusted our Demand Profile (the tool we use to gather JTBD data ) to include an option to link a desire with a constraint. In this case, it seems redundant to use the label “unmet” when there are constraints associated with the desire. If there are constraints associated with the desire, then, of course, it’s unsatisfied.

Second, “unmet” alludes to this zero-sum nature of a desire — which is not the case. Human experiences are not binary. So we want to make that clear.