On the Benefits and Pitfalls of Competitive Research

Sholom Sandalow, Friday, December 7, 2007 @ 6:23 pm

Competitive research is part of the design process at Pathfinder. By competitive research, I mean spending time getting to know how others have solved the problems you are confronted with.  We do this type of research separately to start both the Information Architecture and the Visual Design phases of our process.

Recently, though, I’ve been thinking about the net effect of the importance that it plays in the Visual Design process.  Specifically, to what extent does it help, and when does it hinder.

One the one hand, it can be really dumb to start designing something without knowing what has already been done in that space.  Starting from scratch can be a real time waster.  It pays to take advantage of other’s successful design thinking as it relates to the problems you have to solve, because they might have been solved already.     

However the more immersed one becomes in a particular domain--the more exposure one has to the state of the art--the more boxed in one can get.  You become accustomed to seeing problems not as challenges in need of creative thinking, but as patterns that conform to some already defined problem/solution set. Then all you have to do as a designer is simply find that matching set.  It may sometimes be easy, even more often than not, and there may be projects when doing this is the best you can hope for under the current constraints, but eventually it’ll hurt you as a designer, because you can get to used to searching for patterns. Cliché as it may be, your creativity is like a muscle. You have to exercise it daily for it to grow.  And not all problems have a matching solution yet.  There will always be unique problems that will require you to solve them on your own, and you’ll be caught off guard if you haven’t practiced using your own design skills.

I would say that for competitive research to be an effective, and positive experience in the long run, it has to be balanced with a healthy dose of skepticism.  As a designer you should open yourself up to what others have done, and in fact realize that it’s very important not to design in a vacuum.  But as you explore those designs that came before you, keep in mind that it’s up to you to use your creative skills to come up with a solution. You can’t let your skills sit in the dark, while you let others do the hard work.  Eventually it’ll come back to bit you.  Take what works.  There’s no reason not to.  But even then, don’t just consume it, deconstruct it.  Take a designers critical eye to it, so you can learn from it and grow as a designer.

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user experience design

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