Design formula: Simple and effective analysis of competitive goods

Two days ago, at the invitation of a boss, for product planning to do a lecture. Because the preparation is not very sufficient, speak also a little short, so may be in many students listen to, there will be some boring and irrelevant. So simply retell the handout, for all interested students to criticize the advice.

Objective

A design to give lectures to the planners, how much is also a cross career, so finally selected a relatively simple and effective on both sides-"competition analysis"-to do the theme.

In other words, design and planning have something in common. We are engaged in the design, in fact, can be called the narrow sense of the design, nothing more than a number of interactive and visual elements stacked up to a void of demand, into a specific product. And if the broad sense of design, planning is actually doing product design, but also in the use of various resources, some of the concept of nothingness into specific product needs, and even become products. So, there must be something in common between the two.
So specifically, what kind of knowledge can the design share with the planning?

Let's look at what we designed to do--since we're doing http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/8643.html ' > user experience Design, start with the characteristics of the user experience The user experience is a very subjective and abstract thing, and everyone has a different experience. This means that you can't do what the technology does, as long as you can reproduce it, you can identify a bug and modify it. and a design manuscript, even if the test of 10,000 users, 10,000 users think it is good, you are not sure that the 10,001th user will also think that this is good.

But no matter what, this elusive thing still needs to have a way to define its and not, to evaluate its good and bad. Otherwise, we study the user experience of the people, not become a liar fortune teller, casually said on the line? The reason that UE becomes an industry shows that it has certain scientific methods. It is the essence of the user experience research to find out the answer from the abstract and the objective evaluation method for subjective things.

And based on what has been said in common, this essence can certainly be used by the planners and help them with their work.

Concepts and methods

I do not want to put the topic on the philosophy, but in fact, as long as the approach, it is not far from the level of philosophy. Because philosophy itself is the discipline that guides people to understand the world, methodology is one of the components.

From the online search, the method of "competitive analysis" comes from a "comparative study" in anthropology. The comparative research method is a basic method of cultural anthropology. Also called analogy analysis method, refers to two or more than two things or objects to compare, to find their similarities and differences between the analysis method. It is a basic method for people to know things.

To put it simply, my son has been doing such a thing lately, this little guy, less than two years old, will pick up two blocks, put together to say "the same" or "different"; when you see the mother in the video and the mother behind, he will say "two moms," and when you see strangers (no matter how beautiful they are), even if you sometimes call the wrong , but basically do not mistake each other for their mother's. In fact, he is in the understanding of the world, to know the people and things around, learning to identify the similarities and differences of everything.

And that's what we're going to do.

Simply put, "competitive analysis" is "looking for different", "we come to find fault" such a game, is that people often say "not afraid not to know, is afraid of goods than goods", "around." In other words, when you cannot determine the right and wrong of a thing, good and bad, the best way is to take something similar to it. As a user experience, so does the product-"We don't know how to do it, let's see how others do it."

So we go back to the official explanation, and the steps of the anthropological "comparative approach" are:

1. Identify similar phenomena or things;
2. Grouping of similar phenomena or events for comparison purposes;
3. Further analysis based on comparative results.

We put it in the Internet products, we can think that "competition analysis" should have such a step.

1. Set analysis target-competitor;
2. The similar function module or the Appearance detail grouping makes the table;
3. Further analysis based on comparative results.

Application examples

Let's take a look at some common examples:

Such tables are often used in user experience analysis and may not take long enough to identify areas where there are problems and where to improve. Of course you might actually need screenshots and illustrations, but that's roughly the way. It is important, as mentioned earlier, that when you are unable to evaluate a subjective abstraction, or when you cannot convince your partner, it is best to subdivide the problem into parallel.

Here is another:

On web sites for products such as mobile phones or automobiles, we can often see such contrasting tables, mainly for comparison of function points--yes or No. As a user, it's easy to know which one we need. As a developer, we can easily determine what weaknesses or advantages we have with our competitors and adjust them.

The table above generally appears in a programmatic document to compare global features such as the core competencies of a product. And it's mainly used for bosses and boss, because they may not need details, they need results. And when we express in this most intuitive way the improvement of the product planning and beyond the advantages and difficulties of competitors, I think at least more convincing than the empty description.

What's missing?

OK, the method is finished, very simple, isn't it? Just make a horizontal contrast. Perhaps you would say, I would have, but what is its role?

function is actually as mentioned above, also very simple. Let yourself and others quickly understand the characteristics of this product and its differences with competitors. Help you and your teammates quickly decide what to do and how to do it. If necessary, use it as a conclusive evidence to persuade people who disagree with you.

Are these reasons sufficient enough?

In the lecture, I enclose a real user experience of the competition analysis report, that is, NetEase blog and another well-known blog between the comparative analysis. I extracted 20 more representative questions, and prepared 50 cards, and asked a mm assistant to help. Every time I talk about a problem, I ask her to draw 0-5 cards from it as a user. If she feels serious about the problem, take out a few more, such as 4-5, and if it's not serious, smoke or smoke less.

So before 20 questions are finished, if 50 cards have been exhausted, it means that the product is already bad, and if there are some remaining, then the user experience of the product is fine.

In fact, only about One-third of the cards were drawn when the final questions were all finished. That is to say, the problems raised in this report may be relatively strict, and for a professional user who has an understanding of network products, some of the problems that we put forward as the focus will not cause much trouble to her. Anyway, the product is pretty good.

But then again, I shook up another baggage that was prepared in advance--the calculation formula.

Let's say the assistant was able to take 1/3 out of 50 cards on behalf of a universal user, which means the problems cost her 1/3 of the patience. In other words, our blog is not a lot of problems, the general user can accept, but in fact may already in the process of use, more or less 1/3 of users have been disturbed. And the number of users of the blog is more than 100 million! Hundreds of thousands of of people are posting new blogs every day, and more are updating, revising and reading.

On this basis, the cost of this 1/3 is a bit too big ... (What's more, we're experimenting with excerpts, and the actual problem is several times.) ）

Of course, that might seem a bit alarmist. But I think that if we think about it this way, it will help us understand how important our work is.

At the very least, when you realize that a little bit of detail flaws can affect the normal use of hundreds of thousands of or even hundreds of millions of people, will you still be "a little too bad"? When you find that if you can let the assistant mm less draw a card, in fact, for the product of hundreds of thousands of users of the heart, you will also "because of good small and not for" Mody?

Limitation and significance

Finally, talk about the limitations of this approach.

Similarly, according to its origins, the limitations of the anthropological approach to comparative research are described in this way: "The main disadvantage is that the cultural elements and the whole culture split up (cultural elements belong to the entire text ratio, and only in the entire culture has significance), and somewhat far-fetched, to some surface image, But the cultural elements that have different backgrounds come together. ”。

In other words, we can not rely solely on this method to judge a product's pros and cons, it is only an objective comparison of the collection. Simply put, it may have the following problems that result in error:

The

element is separate from the whole, which is consistent with the official statement. Analysis from the product culture, because the product culture of competing products may be different, can not be compared from the local. Just by listing the superficial stuff, you may overlook many factors such as the intrinsic relevance or limitation of the product itself. Although the form of several competing products is similar, but the user group or different, simple comparison may have certain errors.

So, when you're done with a "pick and choose" game, you may want to analyze the results further to determine which ones to choose from, rather than simply scripted, and then change, the result is also very dangerous.

However, although this method will be like the big error, but I think its positive meaning will be more, after all, we just know the problem, can be very good to bypass and prepare psychologically. The general positive significance is as follows:

Knowing the enemy, the central idea of the art of war, this is nothing to say. You've seen and analyzed your competitors and you can at least think a little more. The so-called "stone of his mountain, you can attack Jade", maybe some of you tangled up a half-day of things, the other party has long tangled up and resolved out. Even if the two sides are not resolved, at least the other side of the way can help you develop ideas. This approach can help you make a choice when you don't know how to decide.

Long-winded

In fact, I think that compared to the user experience researcher, product planning is more to apply these comparison methods. Because, like this kind of competitive analysis, for designers, it is just a quick way to find a problem, plus the means to persuade demand or technical side, most of the search is some interactive or visual details. For the product leader (planning), it is more important to know, and like function point, competitiveness, data ... Planning to face more abstract and uncertain things, there is such an abstraction into the image of the method, should be more than the mere words to tangle much better.

In addition, it is recommended to use this method to "pick fault" people, do not like a fly without a head east a piece of comparison. First of all, the structure of the product and you want to know the list of things, subdivided, and then another item to compare, will be more convenient.

Source: http://uedc.163.com/1507.html