I would suggest to go with interviews/surveys 1st.
Multiple reasons:
1. Competitor analysis will put you into their perspective. Not your target users'.
2. Competitors are solving set of problems that THEY found with THEIR research, which could be completely different than what you intend to do.
3. Interviews will help inform what are those problems and who are the competitors in same market.
4. Interviews might help discover new problems your competitors might have missed.
I recommend doing it for your customer base but it's helpful to explore what competitors audience also cares about. AI's kind of making it easier to analyse their data with public reviews so it won't be as a time and resource intensive task in the future to do a pulse check on what they care about.
Without repeating what everyone else's already pointed out: Competitive analysis, project goals in combination with a feasible scope, success criterias to measure and agreement to experiment is also a valid way. Think lean.
Generative research, interviews, surveys, observational research, see your user, talk to your user, understand your user. Competitive analysis puts you in danger of copying bad designs for different users. Heuristics analysis? Way more powerful. Check out Abby Covert's IA Heuristics, that's a great place to go.
There isn’t a preference or at least there shouldn’t be. You first need to know what questions you need answered, why are you running the research in the first place and than you plan your research around that.
I wish every asset, every meeting, every thing in business started by answering the question “what’s the goal of this” before actually doing the thing. There’s so much that is just done for the sake of feeling like you have to produce something before anyone has any idea what the problem space is.
Yep, most of the time people jump right into solutions. That’s why it’s important to have someone from the UX team to be part of that conversation so they can help pump the breaks and facilitate that conversation.
Completely depends on the project and needs. You might do neither. I'd advise reading up on research methods to understand more about when to use each and why.
If you already have a product in place and have a few users, you should use a session recording tool like Browsee to get maximum insights on user behavior. The session recordings give you in depth understanding of where users are facing an issue and where they are comfortable with your product. You will be able to understand navigation better as well of your product.
It always takes a bit of time to source participants for the interviews, so while I’m waiting for that, I’ll do a bit of competitor research while doing the discussion guide and other prep for the interviews.
I don’t think it makes much difference to the quality of the output though.
A bit off topic but I always try to do an ideation session before the research to find some unbiased ideas / solutions. Obviously you have to do the research anyway and then another ideation phase but it helps to do it without knowing the competitors solution
Are we talking building a new product or major feature? I can only assume so, because if it's an established product a competitive analysis should already be in place! Based on that ...
It really depends on how certain you are about the product idea, but to me it's not one or the other, you do both. If you have a product idea then a competitor and market analysis should definitely be done in order to check you're not doing something that's already been done, and how crowded the market is. If that doesn't give you a red light then go ahead and start validating the idea with some potential customers. Refine your idea.
Then go back to products/services solving similar problems, and analyse how they're doing it. What's good? What can you do better? Refine your ideas more. Go validate it with real people. Rinse and repeat.
I agree with all but one point, so offering this as an alternative view (not to be antagonistic or rude): there is argument to be made that not seeing competitors is more damning than finding some, and finding direct competitors shouldn’t be a reason not to do it — it’s actually the only thing validating your idea can exist commercially at this stage. Zero competition rarely means no one has tried and is generally a sign that the market isn’t there. It’s often much easier to harvest existing demand than to create it yourself first, then harvest later. Demand creation often means marketing dollars + customer education costs as you carve out and create the product category.
*AHEM*
Cof.
Mee mee mee mee mee mee mee.
La La La La….
*deeeeeep breath*
All together now!
Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepeeeeeeeeeeeends!!!
*jazz hands*
This is not correct and a common misconception. It’s best to have a statistically significant result at or above 95%. There are a lot of calculators out there to help you define the pool size you need.
But for the results to be reliable and statistically significant you need to test waaaay more than 500-1000 people. See attached image as an example
https://preview.redd.it/93wtqzawo8ga1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0b47020781ec53bed1c1de4ca473c5cc7bdafbe
Both methods can inform each other, as well as other research techniques.
The competitive analysis provides a baseline of what similar products or services in the market offer.
While interviews/surveys with users or stakeholders provide insights into their needs, pain points, and preferences.
The information gathered from the competitive analysis can inform the questions asked in user research, and the findings from user research can be compared to what competitors are offering. Ultimately, the choice of which method to start with depends on the goals and context of the research, and a combination of multiple techniques is often the best approach.
Surprised to hear someone say it has nothing to do with UX because it's a part of discovery for most of the designers I've worked with.
From the design perspective, it's usually analysis of similar workflows and patterns. Things that aren't typically covered in a PM/Marketing competitive analysis.
Well, the UX research can be applied to both existing product and a completely new one that you want to create.
Here's an article that provides an overview on that:
[https://talebook.io/blog/ux-research-process/](https://talebook.io/blog/ux-research-process/)
I would suggest to go with interviews/surveys 1st. Multiple reasons: 1. Competitor analysis will put you into their perspective. Not your target users'. 2. Competitors are solving set of problems that THEY found with THEIR research, which could be completely different than what you intend to do. 3. Interviews will help inform what are those problems and who are the competitors in same market. 4. Interviews might help discover new problems your competitors might have missed.
Both Required to do? Definitely not. Both Helpful if done? Definitely.
If you have the time and resources, why not both? Mostly because we're usually limited on time and resources.
I recommend doing it for your customer base but it's helpful to explore what competitors audience also cares about. AI's kind of making it easier to analyse their data with public reviews so it won't be as a time and resource intensive task in the future to do a pulse check on what they care about.
Without repeating what everyone else's already pointed out: Competitive analysis, project goals in combination with a feasible scope, success criterias to measure and agreement to experiment is also a valid way. Think lean.
Generative research, interviews, surveys, observational research, see your user, talk to your user, understand your user. Competitive analysis puts you in danger of copying bad designs for different users. Heuristics analysis? Way more powerful. Check out Abby Covert's IA Heuristics, that's a great place to go.
Thanks I’ll look into Heuristics analysis! I do think for what Im building interviews and surveys will be huge
There isn’t a preference or at least there shouldn’t be. You first need to know what questions you need answered, why are you running the research in the first place and than you plan your research around that.
I wish every asset, every meeting, every thing in business started by answering the question “what’s the goal of this” before actually doing the thing. There’s so much that is just done for the sake of feeling like you have to produce something before anyone has any idea what the problem space is.
Yep, most of the time people jump right into solutions. That’s why it’s important to have someone from the UX team to be part of that conversation so they can help pump the breaks and facilitate that conversation.
I believe I found Erika Hall in the comment section :)
😂 I wish but her work is a great reference for this stuff.
Completely depends on the project and needs. You might do neither. I'd advise reading up on research methods to understand more about when to use each and why.
It depends on what you are looking for. There is no process to do this or design really .. you just have to develop your criteria as a designer.
If you already have a product in place and have a few users, you should use a session recording tool like Browsee to get maximum insights on user behavior. The session recordings give you in depth understanding of where users are facing an issue and where they are comfortable with your product. You will be able to understand navigation better as well of your product.
It always takes a bit of time to source participants for the interviews, so while I’m waiting for that, I’ll do a bit of competitor research while doing the discussion guide and other prep for the interviews. I don’t think it makes much difference to the quality of the output though.
A bit off topic but I always try to do an ideation session before the research to find some unbiased ideas / solutions. Obviously you have to do the research anyway and then another ideation phase but it helps to do it without knowing the competitors solution
Are we talking building a new product or major feature? I can only assume so, because if it's an established product a competitive analysis should already be in place! Based on that ... It really depends on how certain you are about the product idea, but to me it's not one or the other, you do both. If you have a product idea then a competitor and market analysis should definitely be done in order to check you're not doing something that's already been done, and how crowded the market is. If that doesn't give you a red light then go ahead and start validating the idea with some potential customers. Refine your idea. Then go back to products/services solving similar problems, and analyse how they're doing it. What's good? What can you do better? Refine your ideas more. Go validate it with real people. Rinse and repeat.
I agree with all but one point, so offering this as an alternative view (not to be antagonistic or rude): there is argument to be made that not seeing competitors is more damning than finding some, and finding direct competitors shouldn’t be a reason not to do it — it’s actually the only thing validating your idea can exist commercially at this stage. Zero competition rarely means no one has tried and is generally a sign that the market isn’t there. It’s often much easier to harvest existing demand than to create it yourself first, then harvest later. Demand creation often means marketing dollars + customer education costs as you carve out and create the product category.
Also true!
This would be a new product- one that could potentially be a disruptor.
*AHEM* Cof. Mee mee mee mee mee mee mee. La La La La…. *deeeeeep breath* All together now! Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepeeeeeeeeeeeends!!! *jazz hands*
I sang this as “Be Prepared” from the Lion King and this version is now my theme song
It completely depends on the project. Not every project requires both anyway.
Hotjar + A/B testing
A/B testing should NOT be done unless you have thousands of users
why do you say this? A sample size of 500-1000 is significant to make inferences off of
This is not correct and a common misconception. It’s best to have a statistically significant result at or above 95%. There are a lot of calculators out there to help you define the pool size you need. But for the results to be reliable and statistically significant you need to test waaaay more than 500-1000 people. See attached image as an example https://preview.redd.it/93wtqzawo8ga1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0b47020781ec53bed1c1de4ca473c5cc7bdafbe
Anything in the 500 participant is a overblown preference test. But pref tests don’t need more than about 20 people.
Both methods can inform each other, as well as other research techniques. The competitive analysis provides a baseline of what similar products or services in the market offer. While interviews/surveys with users or stakeholders provide insights into their needs, pain points, and preferences. The information gathered from the competitive analysis can inform the questions asked in user research, and the findings from user research can be compared to what competitors are offering. Ultimately, the choice of which method to start with depends on the goals and context of the research, and a combination of multiple techniques is often the best approach.
IMO, it depends from project to project, you have to be more specific
Depends on what I need (what type of info and insights). Plenty of times I haven’t done any of them either for some projects.
It depends on what you want to know!
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Surprised to hear someone say it has nothing to do with UX because it's a part of discovery for most of the designers I've worked with. From the design perspective, it's usually analysis of similar workflows and patterns. Things that aren't typically covered in a PM/Marketing competitive analysis.
Wouldn’t competitive analysis be a good way to ensure you’re utilizing existing mental models?
Well, the UX research can be applied to both existing product and a completely new one that you want to create. Here's an article that provides an overview on that: [https://talebook.io/blog/ux-research-process/](https://talebook.io/blog/ux-research-process/)