Conduct online research to get a background on your company/product. This is considered external research gathering. Try to find the following and anything else that is relevant

Example PDF

• target audience/user base/data on demographics (who uses their product and who are they aiming at? this is important to try and find so we know who our user is)
• origin story/history
• brand goals/mission/vision/values
• brand guidelines (if any? this could demonstrate the company’s tone of voice and look-and-feel)
• services and features (this can also be discovered by playing around with the product itself to see what it does)
• product touchpoints (this is if it has more than just a mobile app. does it also already include extensions like website, smart home device, or wearable component?)
• direct primary competitors (also any indirect competitors? – a product that is in a different category altogether, but which is seen as an alternative purchase choice; for example, “coffee and mineral water” are indirect competitors. )
  

Reference your sources. You can use the typical MLA Works Sites method or if you are just grouping your found information in chunks within your Google Doc, then you can just put the source alongside the chunk of info, so we know where you found it. 

Create a competitor benchmark chart, where you compare different features and qualitative attributes of your competition. Try to compare between 5-7 products.

Example Walkthrough PDF (yours will combine quantitative and qualitative analysis)

Compare some or all of the following and anything else that is relevant and important to your product:

• Feature Set (list out the primary things the product does for the user and compare the different features)
• Tone of Voice
• Customer Reviews (can usually find these in the App Store)
• Usability/Functionality (how easy is it to use?)
• Service (what does it do overall to improve someone’s life. what does it offer?)
• Design Aesthetics
• Price
• Product Extensions/Touchpoints (are there other product extensions within the family – like website, wearables, smart home device, another suite of apps, different platforms?)
• Strengths of Overall Experience
• Weaknesses of Overall Experience

To assist in focusing our objectives and knowledge surrounding this project, we need to begin by asking “What do we think we know?” and “What are the questions we are trying to answer?”

Example Walkthrough PDF

1. Framing:
   Answer Framing Questions by making a copy of this Google Doc. Make a Copy of the Google Doc and move into your own Team Folder. Answer as many as you can Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How questions about your product and specific task.
   
   • Who? questions help determine prospective audiences for your design work.
   • What? questions clarify what people might be doing.
   • When? questions help determine the points in time when people might use your product.
   • Where? questions help you to determine contexts of use.
   • Why? questions help you to explain the root of someone’s behavior.
   • How? questions help you go into detail on what explicit actions or steps people take.
     
     
2. Hypotheses:
   Cluster answers and write at least 5–10 main Hypotheses Statements that you made about your product after doing the framing questions exercise. Group into primary themes.
   
   • At this point, we are asking ourselves, “What do we think we already know?” and “What do we want to verify?”
   • This is helping frame our problem and then we can prove or disprove our assumptions throughout our continued research methods.
   • It is important to remember that these are just OUR opinions right now and that we will be moving forward focusing on our USER’s point-of-view.
     
     
   • Examples of clustered themes:
     • Demographics
     • User habits
     • Attitudes and behaviors using the product
     • Tasks, features, usability of product
       
       
   • Examples of specific hypotheses statements:
     • Attitude-Related: TV watchers that use social media like hearing about their friends’ favorite TV Shows. 
     • Behavior-Related: TV watchers only want to share video clips from the shows they watch most frequently. 
     • Feature-Related: TV watchers are more likely to select and share a highlighted section from a video if it’s popular for other viewers as well.
       
       
3. Objectives
   Finally prioritize and translate your hypotheses statements into objectives statements. This will help when you in the next stages of research.
   • A general example: “Understand how people in the US who watch at least 20 hours of TV a week choose to share their favorite TV moments.”
   • A tightly scoped example: “Determine how infrequent TV viewers in Washington decide which programs to record for later viewing.”
   • An open-ended example: “Discover how Washingtonians decide how to spend their free time.”