Summary:
Validating the market means determining if there is a sufficient number of potential customers who find the product valuable enough to buy it. The most direct way to test this is to gauge their willingness to pay. If target users are not willing to pay a price that makes the business viable, the market for the concept is weak, regardless of how innovative or technically feasible it is.

Correct Option:

B. Recruit target users to test price points at which they would be willing to purchase the app:
This is the correct approach for market validation. It directly tests the core of market viability: whether the value proposition is strong enough to generate revenue. By presenting the concept to target users and exploring their willingness to pay (using methods like a pricing survey or a fake door test), the designer can gather concrete data on the product's potential financial sustainability.

Incorrect Option:
A. Gather a team to ideate and craft ideas that stretch the company's current capabilities:
This is an internal brainstorming activity focused on innovation and feasibility. It generates ideas but provides no external data from the market about whether customers actually want or will pay for those ideas.

C. Meet with developers to estimate the effort required to deliver the proposed experience:
This is a feasibility assessment. It answers the question "Can we build it?" and at what cost. However, a low development cost is meaningless if there is no market willing to purchase the final product. This step is important but comes after establishing there is a market.

Reference:
Salesforce Trailhead, "Discover the Three Lenses of Innovation": This module defines the three lenses. Validating the market falls under Viability. Testing price points with target users is a direct method to assess viability, as it provides evidence for whether the business model can be sustainable.

Summary:
A vision remains abstract unless it is operationalized into measurable goals and integrated into the development lifecycle. To ensure the new mobile app aligns with the strategic vision of a sustainable, efficient digital commerce platform, the strategy designer must translate the vision into concrete metrics and create formal opportunities to evaluate progress against them throughout the project.

Correct Option:

C. Establish KPIs and instill checkpoints in the product development process:
This is the correct and most comprehensive approach.

Establish KPIs: Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that measure both user efficiency (e.g., time to complete a purchase, reduced number of taps) and business logistics efficiency (e.g., reduction in support calls for order tracking, accuracy of delivery estimates).

Instill Checkpoints: Integrate formal reviews at key stages (e.g., after design sprints, during backlog grooming) where the team assesses whether their work is still aligned with the KPIs and the overarching vision. This makes the vision a living guide for decision-making.

Incorrect Option:

A. Design a usability testing recruit plan that leans heavily on environmentalists:
This is a narrow and misguided approach. While sustainability is part of the vision, the core goals are "efficiency for both users and business logistics." Recruiting specifically for environmentalists would bias the feedback toward one aspect and fail to test the broader efficiency goals for a general user base.

B. Research design patterns applicable to digital commerce and business logistics:
This is a valuable tactical activity for the design phase, but it is an input, not a method for ensuring alignment. Researching patterns helps you build the app well, but without KPIs and checkpoints, there is no mechanism to ensure those patterns are effectively serving the strategic vision.

Reference:
Salesforce Trailhead, "Create a Roadmap": This module emphasizes that a vision is realized by setting clear, measurable objectives and integrating strategic checkpoints into the development process. It teaches that alignment is maintained by consistently measuring progress against the goals derived from the vision, which is precisely what establishing KPIs and checkpoints achieves.

Summary:
The problem is clearly identified: a specific user group (people with low vision who struggle with low-contrast colors) is failing to complete purchases. The most effective way to solve a specific, known accessibility challenge is to involve the people who experience it directly in the design process. They are the true experts on the barriers they face and can provide immediate, actionable feedback on what changes would make the site usable for them.

Correct Option:

C. Invite users to co-create as accessibility experts:
This is the most direct and effective solution. Co-creating with users who have low vision allows them to identify precisely which color combinations, text sizes, and UI elements are problematic. They can test prototypes in real-time and suggest alternatives that work for them. This ensures the solution is not based on assumptions but on lived experience, leading to a genuinely inclusive design that directly addresses the conversion barrier.

Incorrect Option:

A. Ideate marketing concepts to reach new audiences:
This completely misses the point. The problem isn't marketing or awareness; it's that the website itself is inaccessible, preventing conversion from visitors who are already arriving at the site. This approach does not fix the core product issue.

B. Conduct an empathy workshop to understand the audience:
While empathy is crucial, an internal workshop is an intermediate step. When the user group and their specific barrier (color contrast) are already known, the most powerful action is to move beyond internal understanding and engage them directly in the solution. A workshop without users can still rely on guesswork.

Reference:
Salesforce Trailhead, "Accessibility Basics": This module emphasizes that the best way to build accessible products is to "include people with disabilities in your user research and design process." Inviting users to co-create is the practical application of this principle, moving from empathy to direct partnership to solve identified accessibility challenges.

Summary:
The leadership team at Cloud Kicks is risk-averse and data-driven. To gain their buy-in for an innovative, unproven idea, a strategy designer must speak their language: the language of data and validated learning. Instead of presenting a fully formed vision as a fait accompli, the approach should be to frame the innovation as a series of testable hypotheses and then use low-fidelity experiments to generate the very metrics leaders need to feel confident in the investment.

Correct Option:

C. Identify the biggest questions about the product vision and collect data on prototypes:
This is the correct approach. It directly addresses the leaders' aversion to risk by systematically de-risking the idea.

Identify Questions: Frame the vision's riskiest assumptions as specific, answerable questions (e.g., "Will users understand the value?", "Are they willing to pay?").

Collect Data on Prototypes: Build low-cost, rapid prototypes (e.g., a mockup, a landing page, a concierge test) to gather quantitative and qualitative data that answers these questions. Presenting this empirical evidence transforms the conversation from one about subjective belief to one about objective data, which this leadership team will respect.

Incorrect Option:

A. Run qualitative user research on the product vision and share key feedback with stakeholders:
While qualitative research is valuable, it may be dismissed by a metrics-focused team as "anecdotal" or "soft" data. It does not provide the hard numbers this audience likely requires to justify a significant investment.

B. Conduct a competitive analysis of other products in the same market as the product vision:
This approach reinforces a follower mindset, not an innovative one. It shows what is already proven but does not provide data to validate Cloud Kicks' own unique vision. It may even be used as evidence against the idea if no direct competitors exist.

Reference:
Salesforce Trailhead, "Identify Assumptions and Risks": This module teaches that the best way to de-risk new ideas is to identify key assumptions and then run experiments to test them. This data-driven approach to innovation is designed to build confidence and make progress in the face of uncertainty, which is exactly what is needed to persuade a metrics-oriented leadership team.

Summary:
Executive concerns about business outcomes indicate a gap between the presented product vision and the strategic business logic. Executives need to see a clear, logical connection between the proposed features, the value they create for the customer, and the resulting positive impact on key business metrics (e.g., revenue, market share, cost reduction). The strategy designer must explicitly articulate this value chain.

Correct Option:

C. Provide a breakdown of the strategy, linking features with consumer benefits and outcomes:
This is the most direct and effective response. It addresses the executives' core concern by creating a transparent map from activity to result. For example: "Feature A (e.g., one-click reorder) provides Consumer Benefit B (e.g., convenience and time savings), which drives Business Outcome C (e.g., increased customer retention and lifetime value)." This demonstrates strategic forethought and justifies the investment.

Incorrect Option:

A. Collect feedback and use it to define constraints for a new co-creation activity:
This is a reactive and time-consuming approach that avoids the immediate question. It signals that the strategy was not fully formed and pushes the problem back onto the executives to help solve, rather than providing the clarity they are seeking.

B. Share stories from research that show the design team understands the customers' needs:
While customer understanding is the foundation of desirability, it does not, on its own, address business viability. More customer stories will not answer the fundamental question of how the product will achieve specific business outcomes. This response stays in the problem space without moving to the solution's strategic impact.

Reference:
Salesforce Trailhead, "Create a Strategy to Deliver Value": This module focuses on connecting customer needs to business value. It teaches that a clear strategy must articulate how the solution will deliver measurable outcomes, which is precisely what is required to address executive concerns and secure buy-in.