Building Something Nobody Wants

Indonesia is building a new capital city.

Not relocating government offices. Not extending Jakarta.

Building, from scratch, a whole new city called Nusantara.

It was meant to solve a very real problem: Jakarta is overcrowded, polluted, and literally sinking. So in 2019, President Joko Widodo announced plans for a green, smart, sustainable capital in Borneo.

But as The Guardian recently reported, the dream is wobbling. Funding has been cut, civil servants are reluctant to move, and the site — still more scaffolding than skyline - is in danger of becoming a ghost city.

It’s a remarkable feat of engineering. Yet it raises a deeply familiar question:

What happens when you build something nobody actually wants?

The Three Circles (and the Missing One)

Design thinking has its sacred diagram - three overlapping circles:

• Feasibility: Can we build it?
• Viability: Will it sustain itself?
• Desirability: Do people want it?

In theory, all three should overlap neatly in the centre - the mythical “sweet spot.”

In practice, one circle nearly always takes over.

Startups chase viability (the pitch deck version of reality).

Governments chase feasibility (the shovel-ready version).

And desirability? That’s the soft one. The fuzzy one. The one that’s hard to measure - so it quietly slides off the table.

The “Field of Dreams” Problem

“If you build it, they will come.”

It’s become the most dangerous promise in design, and I bet you know someone who loves it.

Originally a line from a 1989 baseball film, it’s now a kind of blind optimism masquerading as strategy. Teams repeat it when their product vision outpaces their user understanding. Founders quote it when they’re halfway through a roadmap nobody asked for, and that person you know who loves it, quotes it all the time. ALL THE TIME.

It sounds bold. It sounds visionary.

But it’s often a way of saying, “We’ll worry about desirability later.”

The truth is, they rarely come.

Because desire isn’t summoned by completion - it’s earned through connection.

When Desire is Designed For, Not With

Desirability isn’t decoration. It’s direction. It’s not about making it nice or adding UX later. It’s about who gets to define what “want” actually means.

You can’t declare desirability from a boardroom - or in this case, a government palace. It’s not something you build for people; it’s something you build with them.

Nusantara was designed for a population that never asked to go.

Civil servants with families in Jakarta were told to uproot their lives for a vision they didn’t share.

The city may promise clean air and gleaming infrastructure, but that doesn’t translate to want.

A move that looks logical on paper still feels costly in the heart.

And that’s the quiet truth of desirability:

It isn’t about better features or even better futures.

It’s about emotional gravity - whether people feel pulled toward what you’ve made.

Nusantara has engineering. It has funding.

What it lacks is pull.

The Product Parallel

You can see the same story play out in tech.

Google Glass was feasible - extraordinary engineering, years ahead of its time.

And viable - Google could afford to bet big.
But desirable? Not quite.

People didn’t want to wear cameras on their faces. Socially, it felt intrusive, even a little creepy. It solved no felt need, only a technological itch.

Then came Quibi - the billion-dollar streaming platform built for short-form, vertical videos.

The tech worked. The business case made sense on paper.

But nobody asked for it. Audiences already had TikTok and YouTube. Quibi mistook novelty for need - and folded within months.

Contrast that with Notion.

It started with almost no money, no marketing, and a fanatical attention to feel.

Its early adopters didn’t just use it - they built worlds inside it. Communities formed, templates spread, and the product evolved with its users. Only once desirability was undeniable did Notion expand into the business world.

It didn’t assume people would come. It earned the right for them to stay.

Measuring Desire

Desirability is tricky to quantify - but not invisible.

You can feel it in small signals long before metrics appear:

• People tell their friends.
• They feel relief when they use it.
• They build on top of it, not around it.
• They notice when it’s gone.

It’s the early warmth before the analytics catch up.

That flicker in a user’s face when they say, “Oh - this actually helps.”

That’s the data point that matters most.

The Cost of Ignoring Desire

When desirability is skipped, the symptoms don’t show up in your Jira board.

They arrive slowly - a low-grade hum of disinterest.

Launch day looks fine.
The press release lands.
The dashboards stay stubbornly flat.

Soon, you’re maintaining something that works perfectly, yet feels hollow.
The architecture is sound. The engineering is elegant.
But the spirit, the human draw, isn’t there.

You’ve built Nusantara without its citizens.
You’ve built your Field of Dreams… and those stands, they’re empty.

Measuring Desire Before It Exists

Most teams only measure desirability after launch - through metrics, sign-ups, reviews, churn.

But desirability isn’t a post-hoc number. It’s a pre-launch feeling.
You can sense it long before analytics appear, if you know where to look.

1. Watch for Pull, Not Politeness

Ask people what they think of your idea, and they’ll be nice.

Ask them what they’d give up to have i,t and you’ll learn the truth. Desire shows up as trade-offs - time, money, attention, effort. If nobody’s willing to change behaviour, you don’t yet have pull.

2. Prototype Emotion, Not Just Function

Early tests tend to focus on usability: can they do it, can they find it, can they finish it?

Desirability testing asks a different question: how did it feel? You’re looking for glimmers of attachment - smiles, language shifts, surprise, even mild defensiveness. If people start imagining your product in their lives, you’ve crossed from curiosity into want.

3. Run the Absence Test

Show someone your prototype. Then take it away.

Would they care if it disappeared? Desirable things create loss aversion even before they exist. If people shrug when it’s gone, it’s probably not love yet.

4. Map Emotional Jobs, Not Just Functional Ones

Every product does two jobs: the one on the spec sheet, and the one in the heart.

A to-do app manages tasks, but it also gives control. A budgeting tool tracks spending ,but it also calms anxiety. If you can’t name the emotional job, you can’t design for desire.

5. Listen for the Future Tense

When people start using words like “I will” and “I can’t wait”, you’re onto something.

Future tense is the language of anticipation - the sound of nascent desire. It’s the moment when feedback shifts from critique to ownership:

“When you add this, I’ll move everything over.”

That’s not research. That’s readiness.

6. Invite Rejection Early

Desirability hides behind politeness, so you have to give people permission to dislike your idea.

The best early feedback sessions aren’t love-ins, they’re brutal honesty clubs.

Ask: “What would make you not use this?”

If the answers are clear and consistent, you’re learning where desire actually breaks.

7. Test Stories, Not Features

Before anyone buys a product, they buy the story of how it fits their life.

Describe that story to people before you build it. If they finish the sentence for you, “Oh, like when I…” that’s resonance. If they just nod politely, you’ve still got homework.

Desirability can’t be measured with a single metric, but it can be sensed, triangulated, and rehearsed.

The trick is to notice emotion before data.

To treat excitement as evidence, and indifference as the loudest signal of all.

The Humble Circle

We like to think of desirability as the “soft” circle - the emotional one.

But maybe it’s the sovereign one.

The circle that decides whether the others even matter.

Because feasibility and viability can both succeed, and still fail, if no one cares.

Desirability isn’t the final polish. It’s the first promise. The signal that what you’re building actually belongs in someone’s world.

(Inspired by The Guardian’s report on Indonesia’s new capital, Nusantara)

(Images for this article were inspired by Katerina Kamprani’s https://www.theuncomfortable.com/ )

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Author’s note:

I am currently deeply interested in using AI to generate both visual and text-based content. I am actively collaborating with AI on multiple platforms to explore my thoughts on what creativity is and is not.

My current approach is to collaborate with AI by using the output as a foundation upon which to build and modify.