Competitive research
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After this lesson, you will be able to:
- Compare products in the same space or in adjacent industries, including competitive reviews and task analyses
- Conduct competitive research
- Explore how surveys and task analysis inform research
STUDENT PRE-WORK
Before this lesson, you should already be able to:
- Define the elements of user experience design
- Develop basic skills in creative problem solving, innovation, and human-centered design through a fast-paced design thinking activity
- Conduct an effective user interview
- Draft a research plan and write a discussion guide for final project interviews
INSTRUCTOR PREP
Before this lesson, instructors will need to:
- Find an example of a competitive analysis you or someone else has done to model for the class
Opening (5 mins)
Talking to users and understanding their needs is crucial for user-centered design, but there are other ways to get the insights you need to move forward. In most circumstances, you’ll also have another end user — the business. Businesses have needs and goals too, right?
The whole point of design thinking and UX is to find an approach that meets both the business goals and user needs, and also falls within the realm of technical possibility...otherwise it can all go horribly wrong.
Introduction: No Such Thing as a Blank Canvas (5 mins)
Every project comes with pre-existing constraints and requirements. Usually, it requires a lot of effort to collect, document and make sense of this information. Product Managers (and sometimes Business Analysts) work to understand these constraints and document the functionality of a product, but a lot of UX designers also wind up building their product management skills over time.
In project three we're requiring that this takes place, so it’s up to you to take everything with a gigantic grain of salt and do your due diligence by validating the prompt you’ve been given.
Even when talking to stakeholders, it’s best to start with “Why?”
One important thing to ask: “What would success look like, in terms of the business goals we’d be able to accomplish?” Work backwards from there. There may be misconceptions about the user, or what is realistic to expect of people.
Check: Why spend so much time collecting information about constraints and requirements? "Validation"
Guided Practice: The Unreasonable Stakeholder (10 mins)
Instructor Note: You should customize this prompt in a way that works with your Guided Practice topic. Your job here is to function as the unreasonable stakeholder who already thinks they know what they want. Students will role play with one another how they might address this type of request.
It’s your first meeting with a new client. The client just told you, “I want to make a mobile vacation guide app for EVERYBODY. We’re gonna compete with Travelocity, Priceline, and TripAdvisor and make lots of money!”
You’ve been put on the spot — how are you going to respond?
Pair up. One of you be the client, and one be the developer/designer. Have a conversation—practice dealing with this sort of request. You have 5 minutes!
Instructor Note: After 5 minutes, conduct a discussion about what sort of questions asked by the developer/designer were most productive.
What we just did is known as Stakeholder Research: trying to flesh out needs and priorities on the business side is also very important to evaluating requests. Remember, even if you ask, “Why?” you can always ask, “Why?” again.
Check: If your client/stakeholders are particularly obsessed with a specific experience, what could you do next?
Evaluate your competitors via testing. If you don’t have anything to test yet, use a competitor’s experience. If you or a stakeholder are obsessing over a competitor project that looks great, test it out to see if it lives up to expectations for your target audience. Ask people to walk you through completing specific user goals, and observe their behavior.
Together, lets look at an example of a task analysis.
Instructor note: Take a few minutes to look through this example.
Demo: Uber's Competition (10 mins)
Let's discuss - what kind of company is Uber? They’re a car service you can request via your phone.
Who are they competing with? At first though, it's obviously local taxi services, right?
They’re the world’s largest taxi service, but they own no cars, have few employees, and are worth billions.
- How does this relate to their investments in robotics and self-driving cars?
- What about their UberRUSH messenger service?
- Do you think Uber thinks they’re competing with taxi services? Perhaps they think of themselves as a delivery service (of people, of packages).
"Reach competitors" for Uber can be companies like Google (robotics, driving cars) and even Seamless (Uber started delivering lunch!) That’s very different from competing with local taxi services.
Check: What is the takeaway here?
So the main takeaway: Companies your business considers to be direct competitors may not consider YOU a direct competitor.
Parity is not a strategy
You can’t base your decisions on what your competitors have out right now, because they’re usually working on a future version behind the scenes. Competitive analysis can be a slippery slope. It’s not about having the most features, but a tightly edited set that addresses the problem well - this has a better chance at happening when major assumptions are validated.
Just because a client gives you a list of their “competitors” doesn’t mean you should take it at face value. Who does the target audience consider your competitors to be? What other experiences would they consider to be similar? (At this point in product development, it would be a great time for a survey, to see what other competitors your target audience is actually engaging with.)
Introduction: Competitive Analysis (15 mins)
The two common structures for competitive analyses are:
Feature inventory - This is a common form of competitive analysis; You can compare competitors on countless criteria, but the basic format for a competitive analysis is a table with competitors across the top and criteria down the side.
- Cons: It leads to wanting to check all the boxes, when in fact that may be a distraction from maximizing the value that will help your users, as opposed to creating the features you think go with the rest...they may be distractions.
- Lets look at a couple of examples of a Competitive Analysis using feature inventory:
+ / Δ (pluses and deltas) model
- An informal way of handling it is the pluses and deltas model, where you note what is being done well, and what could be improved. (It’s basically pros/cons)
Helps you focus on the value offered to users, and not the quantity of features, is what’s really going to drive business growth.
Lets look at a couple of examples of a Competitive Analysis using pluses and delta model:
Guided Practice: Create a Competitive Analysis (20 mins)
Instructor Note: Instructor can replace with analysis of products related to topics you've discussed in class.
Take 10 minutes, pair up and review both Hulu and Netflix - try to do both a feature inventory analysis and a pluses / delta model.
Check: Discuss as a group for 10 mins.
Conclusion (5 mins)
Remember, we’re not trying to solve a problem for everyone, just solve one problem well. Don’t freak out if someone already built what you’re thinking of. It happens.
Think about these questions:
- Is there an opportunity to address unmet needs?
- Perhaps some niche aspect that some portion of the larger audience needs?
- Or maybe there’s some improvement that makes your experience vastly preferable to use?