Test your idea against the ones from your competitors

Daniele Catalanotto
Aug 10, 2022



A Service Design Principle to better test your next service or product idea.

You give to a kid a lollipop for his birthday. He is happy and thanks you! Awesome you made a great gift. Now comes someone else and offers a PlayStation to that kid. The lollipop doesn’t exist anymore in the mind of the kid.

A lollipop isn’t a bad gift usually. But when compared to other birthday gifts, it kind of sucks.

I feel the same thing happens when we test early shitty drafts of an idea of our service or product (1). We try our idea and show only that one to people. People always see something lovely in something you present them. So you are confident your early idea is pretty good, as is the lollipop. But we forget that this idea will be compared to its competitors and doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

In the book “Design Sprint”, there is this advice “It’s almost always a good idea to present your solution alongside the competition. As a matter of fact, you can ask customers to test out your competitors’ products on Friday right alongside your own prototype.”

When you test your idea against the ideas of your competitors, you can discover what your competitors do better and why.

You can see where people notice the difference between you and your competitors. And once you know that, you can double down on that parts of your service and experience to make it even more captivating.

It’s also smart because building several prototypes of an idea might take a lot of time. You can just consider your competitor's ideas as other prototypes.

This idea gets even more interesting when you think about competition in a larger way.

A competitor doesn’t have to be a direct competitor. For example, the competition of a church is not always another church, but it can also be a meditation app like Headspace, which also gives meaning in life and a sense of community (2).

So let me ask you this:

What indirect competitor could you use to find out if your next idea really helps people as much as you think?

Footnotes

(1) What service designers love to call prototypes.
(2) The founder of Netflix apparently said the same thing about his service. “Think of any night you did not watch Netflix,” he said. “We compete with drinking a bottle of wine. That’s a particularly tough one.”

Daniele's personal notes

  • This is the first draft of this Service Design Principle.
  • Once adapted, even more, this principle could be part of the book "Service Design Principles 201-300"
  • As always feel free to share comments, feedback or personal stories to improve this principle.
Like 2
Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 18, 2022

The second draft of this principle


You give a kid a lollipop for his birthday. He is happy and thanks you! Awesome, you made a great gift. Now comes someone else and offers a PlayStation to that kid. The lollipop doesn’t exist anymore in the mind of the kid.

A lollipop isn’t a bad gift usually. But when compared to other birthday gifts, it kind of sucks.

I feel the same happens when we test early shitty drafts of an idea of our service or product (1). We forget the context. We try our concept and show only one to people.

People always see something lovely in something you present them. So you are confident your early idea is pretty good, as is the lollipop. But we forget that people will compare this idea to its competitors, and it doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

In the book “Design Sprint”, the author shares a piece of advice that goes like this: test your idea against the competition (2).

When you do that, you discover what your competitors do better or worse than you and why. You can then double down on the parts of your service that make a difference to make it even more captivating.

Testing against competitors is also smart because it saves prototyping time. You can just consider your competitor’s ideas as other prototypes.

So let me ask you this:

What (indirect) competitors could you use to find out if your next idea helps people as much as you think?

Footnotes

(1) What service designers love to call prototypes.

(2) A competitor doesn’t have to be a direct competitor. For example, the founder of Netflix apparently said the same thing about his service. “Think of any night you did not watch Netflix,” he said. “We compete with drinking a bottle of wine. That’s a particularly tough one.”

Daniele's notes

  • You just read the second draft of this Service Design Principle.
  • I was able to reduce by 30% the length of this principle compared to its first version.
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Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 30, 2022
Thanks for the feedack JJ, I'll try to see how I can integrate it in the next and fourth iteration ;) 
Daniele Catalanotto
Oct 30, 2022

The third draft of this Service Design Principle

A kid gets a lollipop for his birthday. Nice gift. Then he gets a PlayStation. What happens? The kid forgets the lollipop. The lollipop isn’t a bad gift idea. But when compared to a PlayStation, it sucks.

We often make the same mistake. We forget to test our early ideas (1) against other existing services, as our customers will do.

The author of the book “Design Sprint” (2) encourages us to test our idea against the competition (3). That helps you to discover what others do better or worse. You can then really invest in what makes your service different.

It also makes you save time. Consider your competitor’s ideas as prototypes you don’t build yourself.

So let me ask you.

What (indirect) competitors can you use to test your next idea?

Footnotes
(1) What designers love to call prototypes.

(2) Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz (2016). Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. Simon & Schuster . Available at https://extra.swissinnovation.academy/CTAr accessed 20 October 2022.

(3) A competitor doesn’t have to be a direct competitor. “We compete with drinking a bottle of wine. That’s a particularly tough one.” says Netflix founder. — John Doerr (2015). Netflix's Founder on Building an Iconic Company. Kleiner Perkins. Available at https://extra.swissinnovation.academy/R6UK accessed 20 October 2022.

Daniele’s notes
  • This is the third draft of this principle.
  • I’ve reduced the length of this principle by 46 % compared to the previous draft.
  • I’ve shortened the footnotes.