Industry, SWOT, and competitive analyses

There is more to UX than just the user.

UX is at the center of technology, business, and the user.

Without the business, UX can’t exist, at least not as a career. Knowing the business objectives behind a feature is equally important.

Think about this step in the process as a funnel.

At the top of the funnel, you look at industry trends. Just become familiar with the market and note what’s most important.

Then, work your way down the funnel by conducting a SWOT analysis.

Last, you go to the bottom of the funnel by conducting a competitive analysis.

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1. Industry analysis

The goal of this first step is to get you immersed in the industry at large.

This helps you to understand where the industry is headed.

For example, if your case study targets Spotify, search for “music industry trends” online. Don’t worry about learning about Spotify or its competitors just yet.

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2. SWOT analysis

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

A SWOT analysis give you a more detailed insight into the company and its position in the market.

Strengths and weaknesses relate to the internal environment of the company while opportunities and threats relate to the market, the external environment.

Let’s dive deeper into each category:

• Strengths are internal factors that positively impact the company such as knowledge, brand reputation, intellectual property, etc.
• Weaknesses are internal factors that negatively impact the company such as low funding, poor product quality, bad customer service, etc.
• Opportunities are external factors that have the potential to positively impact the company such as acquiring competitors, strong market growth predictions, international presence, etc.
• Threats are external factors that have the potential to negatively impact the company such as government regulations, new competitors, economic downturns, etc.

A SWOT analysis will give you a high-level idea of where the company is headed both internally and externally. While just a SWOT analysis on its own will not help you to identify a precise problem to target, it will provide you with valuable context.

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3. Competitive analysis

Competitive analyses help you to find ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors and to find gaps in the market.

It answers these types of questions:

• What are your competitors’ features?
• What solutions do your competitors have that your product is lacking?
• What unique features does your product already have that are worth investing in?

Go to the Industry, SWOT, and competitive analyses tab in the Figma workbook.

Then, complete an industry, SWOT, and competitive analyses for REI.

How do you know if you're solving a good business problem?  Or how do you know if it's meaningful or if it's even worth pursuing? 

In this video, we'll help you quickly and effectively answer those questions.

Before we get started, this is the first lesson where you all do exercises in the Figma workbook.

So don't forget to go download the resources at kickassux.com under the free UX course page. 

Alright, let's get started. 

So we are going to talk about how you can identify a problem to solve using industry and competitive analyses. 

They will help you identify problems, find gaps in the markets, identify business opportunities, and know how to differentiate your solutions.

We'll cover how you can gain a better understanding of the markets by looking at industry trends and conducting both a SWOT and competitive analysis. Alright, let's get after it.

Without data, you just another person with an opinion" - Edwards Deming 

Many products fail because they don't solve a real user problem. 

Without really understanding the user, you are not practicing UX. You're subjectively designing features. To put it simply without the user, there is no UX. It's just the X. That said there is more to UX than just the user. 

UX is at the center of technology business and the user. 

Without the business, UX cannot exist. At least not as a career. Knowing the business objectives behind the feature is equally important. For now, think about this step in the process as a funnel. At the top of the funnel, you look at industry trends. Just become familiar with the market and note what's most important.

Then, work your way down the funnel by conducting a SWOT analysis. Last, you go down the funnel by conducting a competitive analysis.

It's easier to conduct research on larger corporations, especially those that are publicly traded. 

It makes it far easier for you to find existing data such as investor reports, and various other analysis. 

You can also target smaller companies if you want to, for your case study, but just be aware that you'll have to dig a little bit more to find useful information.

Let's go into more detail on how we work our way down the funnel. Remember we start at the top of the funnel by looking at industry trends. 

For example, if your case study targets, Spotify search for "music industry trends" online. Don't worry about learning about Spotify or its competitors just yet. 

The goal of this first step is to get you immersed in the industry at large.

This helps you to understand where the industry is headed. When doing this, spend at least 30 minutes reading about industry trends that relate to your company and note the key insights. 

Once you have done that, it's time to conduct a SWOT analysis. This will give you a more detailed insight into the company and its position in the market.

SWOT stands for Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. 

A typical SWOT is created in a four-part quadrant like this. 

Strength and weaknesses relate to the internal environment of the company. 

While opportunities and threats relates to the market, the external environment. 

Let's dive deeper into each category. 

Strengths are the internal factors that positively impact the company such as knowledge, brand reputation, intellectual property, et cetera. 

Weaknesses are internal factors that negatively impact the company, such as low funding, poor product quality, bad customer service, et cetera.

Opportunities are external factors that have the potential to positively impact the company such as acquiring competitors, strong market growth predictions, international presence, et cetera. 

Threats are external factors that have the potential to negatively impact the company such as government regulations, new competitors, economic downturns, et cetera. 

A SWOT analysis will give you a high level idea of where the company is headed, both internally and externally. While just a SWOT analysis on its own will not help you identify a precise problem to target, it'll provide you with valuable context.

Using Spotify as an example, imagine that in your SWOT analysis, you learn that the podcast market is growing, which is a business opportunity.

Later on, when you find the user pain points, you discover that users are really frustrated to have to use competitors apps to listen to podcasts. 

You've just found an opportunity was pursuing. 

And while the SWOT results might seem elusive at first, they will help you later when the time comes to put all the pieces together.

There are two ways to approach your SWOT analysis. Either fill in the four categories of a SWOT by doing some in-depth research online and create from scratch yourself. Or Google your company name followed by "SWOT" to find analyses that have already been conducted.

Once you have completed your SWOT analysis, it's time to head to the bottom of the funnel by conducting a competitive analysis. 

A competitive analysis answers questions like: What are your competitors' features? 

What solutions do competitors have that your product is lacking? 

What unique features does your product already have that are worth investing in? 

Competitive analyses help you find ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors, and to find gaps in the market. 

This is what an empty competitive analysis looks like. 

Let's still use Spotify as an example. 

First figure out who the top three competitors are. If you don't know who they are, Crunchbase.com is a great way to find them.

Otherwise, if you're designing a mobile product, the App Store or Google Play Store are a great way to find competitors. Focus on the biggest competitors and leave the rest. 

Second, try each product and figure out what their main features are. 

If you're looking to redesign a desktop app, only look at the features of competing desktop products. Similarly, if you're planning to redesign a mobile app, just look at the features of competing mobile products.

Don't look across platforms as the feature set will be different. Most of the time, mobile is a simplified version of what can be found on the desktop.

For example, if you're targeting mobile, download all the apps on your phone and create accounts for all four products, yours and the three competitors. 

Once you have access to all products, try them one by one to understand their main features. 

You can also look at their respective marketing sites where they often list out the feature set.

We recommend using pen and paper to start with and write all the main features that each product offers. Start with your company and list all of its main features. Then, do the same for all competitors. Don't look at the products in relation to each other. After writing the features for each product, you're ready to identify trends and potential differentiators.

At this point, go back to your competitive analysis table and fill it in. Once you have completed both axis, fill the main content area with your findings. The most common answers are yes/no, or a key metric. 

In this example, you can see that radio/shows is answered by using yes/no. And the streaming quality is answered using data such as 256 kilobyte per second, or 16 and 24 bits. Boom, that's it. 

Once you finish your competitive analysis, you'll be able to identify potential gaps in the market and feature set that can further differentiate your product from its competitors.

Now we've seen the three techniques to identify a problem on the market. Industry trends, SWOT analysis and competitive analysis. While the SWOT analysis results may seem elusive at first, once your competitive analysis is complete, you'll be able to see trends, which will help you identify what problem to target.

In the Spotify example, imagine that your SWOT analysis showed that there is growing customer interest for better streaming quality. And in your competitive analysis, you found that Spotify's streaming quality is not up to par with other competitors.

This may be a path to pursue and a problem to solve.

To recap we covered: Researching industry trends. 

Performing a SWOT analysis to gain a more detailed insight into the company you're targeting and its position in the market.

Then, conducting a competitive analysis to identify gaps in the market and ways to differentiate your product.

Learning about the industry helps you identify business opportunities. 

This is the stepping stone to knowing what problem to solve. 

And because UX is nothing without the user, it's important to know where the business intersect with user needs. 

Now it's your turn to do the exercise, head to the Figma workbook and go to the Industry, SWOT and competitive analyses tab.

Happy analyzing.