Real-World .NET Applications

[Competitive research] is one of the first things you should do. It can define your world for you and make your life a whole lot easier.

—John Shiple, user experience architect, Yahoo! Inc.

Competitive research can be done at any point in your product cycle. Whether previewing the landscape at the beginning or comparing your finished product to the competition's, it always provides useful information. Picking the perfect moment to do it is less important than doing it regularly and thoroughly. For the most benefit, you should check on your competition repeatedly and continually throughout the lifetime of your product. Whenever you're not testing your own work, you should be researching your competitors'. Even when you have a full testing plan for your product, it makes sense to occasionally put your work aside and investigate your competition.

That said, there are several points where competitive research can really affect your development process.

• When gathering requirements. Research into what the competition's customers find useful, what they find attractive, and where those products fail can guide selection and prioritization of features for your own product.

• Before you redesign. As your product develops and evolves, competitive research can answer questions about design directions since your competition's products can be treated as functional prototypes of some of your own ideas.

• When your competitors make major changes. Researching those changes on people's perceptions and behavior provides insight into their effectiveness, helping you know how to react to the changes.