Competitive Research

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What is Capstone?

What is competitive research?

Competitive research is when you look at other products that are in the same category, and that would be competing against your product for customers/users. The goal is to see where they succeed and fail, so that you can use their experience to aid in creating your product. In the case of this project a social media app.

Who are my competitors?

1. Instagram

Instagram is a social media app where you share images with other users. You then like, comment on, and share other peoples posts. People mainly share photography, but there is also a large community of artists who post and share their works on Instagram. I chose Instagram because of how the users interact with each other — though the sharing of images.

Target/implied Demographic:

• Young adults
• People from the age of 18 - 34

Visual Style :

Their visual style is minimalistic which can be seen in there simple line based icons, as well as there in app color scheme which is either black or white depending on the users settings. The only thing that has colors is the app icon, which uses a simple line logo over a gradient of orange, purple, yellow, and red.

• minimalistic
• focuses on the users content
• branding is bright and colorful

Secondary Research:

Instagram Redesign by Linh Hoang is a case study on Instagram and talks about a few things about redesigning the app. The part that I wanna focus on is Hoangs user research. In Hoangs user research he describes four types of users; The Explorer, The Creator, The Gen Z’er, and The Average User.

• The Explorer is the user that mainly uses Instagram’s explore page, and searching for tags
• The Creator is main goal is to use instagram to get exposure, and network.
• The Gen Z’er is the user how just wants to connect and message with friends.
• The Average User is mainly looks at what other users post to the app.

2. Deviantart

Deviantart is a website where users are able to share their art with other users. Users are also able to sell prints of their works on the website.

Target/implied Demographic:

• Illustrators/creatives
• people who have a passion for art
• people getting into art

Visual Style :

The visual style is fairly minimal, and is set up like a gallery. All the post are displayed in a grid that takes up the screen. All the website and navigation information is in a bar along the top. The colors of the site are neutral dark blues and black, as well as a highlight color that is a neon green-blue.

• focus on the artwork
• minimal

Secondary Research:

The Verge talks on Devant arts redesign from the old army green to the new sleek black and white depending on the light or dark theme. They also talk about the new customizability of the accounts page, and show many different examples of how the user interface has changed to improve the viewing experience.

3. Reddit

Reddit is a social media app where people can post different content to different subreddits. The content varies from subreddit to subreddit but mainly consists of a combination of text posts or image posts with captions. The subreddits I think are relevant to my project are r/drawingprompts and r/art. Since one is about posting prompts that people who don’t know what to draw can draw, and the other is a place where people post and share their artwork, of all different medium.

Target/implied Demographic:

• Young and middle aged adults

Visual Style :

Reddits visual style is a bit more complex, with icons that are silhouette based, and navigation on both the top and the bottom of the screen. The style created by the mix of textual and image content is also more visually complex as there is more information on the screen

• silhouette based icons
• navigation on the top and bottom
• accent color
• mixed user content

What did I learn from the research?

1. Platforms to share user generated content like photos have minimal designs and simple navigation.
2. The focus of the UI is the content that hey users post and create.
3. The target audience is usually people who are interested in art, mainly young adults
4. Neutral colors or black and white work best for framing the users content.
5. Id like to adopt the icons that were line based apposed to silhouette based.
6. The use of black or white with a single bright accent color is successful.