| title | type | duration | creator | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Competitive and user research |
lab |
1:25 |
|
Note: This activity will be done in project 3 groups.
Now, it's time to break up into your teams for project three!
Each group has been contracted by a different client - New York Times, TouchLab, and Vice Media - to create an Android application that can feed people news stories!
For this lab, you will start your work towards your project pitch by doing competitive research and coming up with a research plan including questions for user research.
Once you're in your teams, you're going to do competitive research and create a spreadsheet comparing existing apps that feature a news feed. You should spend about 50 minutes on this portion of the lab.
For your competitive research:
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Choose 5+ experiences or apps in your project’s industry or an adjacent industry, and analyze them
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As a team, choose one of the two formats covered (feature inventory vs. + / Δ), and work together to create a competitive analysis for your project topic:
- If you choose choose feature inventory focus on this question: What features do they offer?
- If you choose + / Δ, focus on these questions: What does each do well? What does each do poorly?
After you're finished with your competitive research, for the remainder of the lab, you're going to come up with a research plan using the Research Plan Worksheet. Write a short research plan for your project that answers the following:
- What area(s) are you interested in researching?
- What are your research goals? What are you trying to learn about your topic?
- Who is your target audience? How will you find them?
Instructor note: Instructor should walk around the classroom to check in on people’s research plans.
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Also, write a script for your project topic that answers the following:
- What can you ask about that will help you get at those research goals?
- Write a list of topics you want to ask about. Then, write questions that correspond to each of those topics.
- Make sure you’re not leading or biasing the questions.
Be sure to use the Research Plan Worksheet for your research plan.
For the competitive analysis, create a blank Google Sheet and fill out your columns/rows as needed.
For the research plan with user research questions, you should have a completed the Research Plan Worksheet.
The competitive analysis should look something like this, depending on what method you choose:
