5. Evaluating the Competition

UNDERSTANDING USER NEEDS is critical, but there will be gaps in your knowledge if your up-front research stops there. You must also understand how your user needs are currently being met in the marketplace. An in-depth competitive user experience (UX) analysis can provide a holistic view of the competitive landscape, which you can then reference throughout the app design process.

This chapter introduces a variety of ways—two-by-two diagrams, heuristic evaluations, competitive benchmarking—to conduct competitive user experience analyses and explains how your findings can help shape your Product Definition Statement, which is outlined in Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines.

Benefits

Competitive UX analyses can help ...

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