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This, and all of the desk research blogs, give an overview of the process and steps taken for each part. I’ve included images taken from the FigJam boards where the majority of the work lives to illustrate the process.

If you would still like to see further details on each part, please view the FigJam board in full.

It can be found at the end of this page, or on this master page.

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After looking at the general market, I wanted to dive deeper into specific competitors

Aim

I want to identify specific competitors to benchmark against throughout the project. This would give me a good idea of competitors, as well as best practice examples to draw from. At this stage, I wanted to focus on the broad aspects of the products or services, rather than the finer design details. This is more to gauge general strengths than UI/UX particulars.

Process

The first step was to identify a set of competitors to review and narrow down. This was based both on the work I had already done in my market research, which gave me similar competitors, as well as more similar products or services I identified in my initial research. I wanted to make sure I was considering a variety of products, so split my initial competitor list into the following:

• Direct Competitors – Other products or services that have similar MAAS (Mobility As A Service) offerings to my own concept.
• Adjacent Competitors – Other transport products or services that are in a similar area (i.e. first party transport apps).
• Analogous Competitors – Offering a similar service with a different transport scope or area.
• Conceptually Analogous Competitors – Similar service concept in a different industry.

This is a technique for dividing competitors I used during placement and found it to be really helpful for ensuring I’ve covered a good range of examples to inform my research.

After establishing an initial list, I did a brief competitor analysis on each. I wouldn’t normally do this many, as it’s time consuming and excessive, but I utilised ChatGPT to run this initial round of analysis. This enabled me to do an initial sweep on analysis and pick out key examples to delve into more.

During research, I find AI to be incredibly helpful. I don’t think it wise to use to fully do the research for you, but it enables you to conduct more research, faster. Previously, I would have gone from that initial list into a deep analysis of a select few, but this way, I can narrow down the list with a greater understanding of each thanks to AI.

With the initial sweep done, I picked out two for each category to do a deeper dive on.

Direct Competitors (Other 3rd Parties with Similar Concept or Features)