How can I use a variable string within command substitution?

Question

I'm attempting to create this command and it fails because the desc variable is being interpreted separately instead of a quoted string. I've tried many variations of quoting with and without using single quotes to make text literal including the my latest attempt below.

If I call the function using:

new_proj "FALSE" "TRUE" "This is a test" "path" "to"

function

new_proj(){
  [ "$1" = "FALSE" ] && local p="p"
  [ "$2" = "TRUE" ] && local o="o"  
  local sw="$p$o"
  [ ! -z $sw ] && sw="-$sw"
  local desc="$3"
  local account="$4"
  local name="$5"
  local create=$(echo mycmd "$sw" -d "desc" "account"/"name")
  if $create; then
    echo "created."
    return 0
  else
    echo "failed!"
    return 1
  fi
}

Expected result - mycmd -po -d "This is a test" path/to