Investigating Existing Solutions

Investigating Existing Solutions

Chances are there have been other attempts to solve the problem which your design effort is seeking to solve. It would be foolish to not research how they solve the problem, and understand what are the advantages and disadvantages of the solution they chose. These attempts may be made by business competitors, in which case you’ll also want to understand the business model and target market of the competitor, or it may the a previously shipped version of the same code base you’re working on. In either case, it would be prudent to investigate these other solutions and document your findings in a competitive/comparative evaluation matrix. You can evaluate everything from business model, target markets, features provided, layouts, to interaction styles. The more you are informed about previous success and failures in solving the problem you’re working to solve, the more likely you are to make a solution that exceeds what’s gone before.