competitive-analysis
owl-listener/designer-skills
Systematically analyze competitor UX patterns, features, and gaps to inform design strategy.
What is competitive-analysis?
Evaluate rival products across information architecture, interaction patterns, visual design, and accessibility to identify strategic opportunities. Use this when you need concrete data on what competitors actually do and where design gaps exist.
- Identify direct, indirect, and aspirational competitors across your category
- Compare UX quality and feature support across key user tasks
- Analyze information architecture, interaction patterns, visual design, and mobile experience
- Build feature comparison matrices with UX quality ratings
- Map competitor strengths, weaknesses, and unaddressed opportunities
- Track how competitors evolve over time
How to install competitive-analysis
npx skills add https://github.com/owl-listener/designer-skills --skill competitive-analysisHow to use competitive-analysis
- 1.List your direct competitors (same problem, same audience) and indirect competitors (same problem, different audience)
- 2.Select 3–5 key user tasks or journeys to evaluate across all competitors
- 3.For each task, rate competitor support level, steps required, and UX quality (1–5 scale)
- 4.Document each competitor's strengths, friction points, and unique approaches
- 5.Identify patterns that are table-stakes versus true differentiators
- 6.Create an opportunity map showing gaps no competitor addresses well
Use cases
- Evaluating whether a new feature is table-stakes or a differentiator before building it
- Identifying friction points in competitor flows to design smoother alternatives
- Finding design patterns that work well in adjacent categories to adapt for your product
- Justifying design decisions to stakeholders with concrete competitive evidence
- Spotting market gaps where no competitor has solved a user problem well
- Product designers planning feature roadmaps
- UX researchers validating design hypotheses
- Product managers assessing competitive positioning
- Design leads making strategic interaction decisions
competitive-analysis FAQ
Focus on full journeys and key tasks, not isolated screens. This reveals UX quality and friction points that feature checklists miss.
Review quarterly or when major competitors ship significant updates. Markets evolve; stale analysis leads to poor decisions.
Include aspirational benchmarks from adjacent domains—they often have best-in-class solutions you can adapt, even if they're not direct competitors.
Start with direct competitors (same problem, same audience), then add 1–2 indirect competitors and one aspirational example from a related category.
Full instructions (SKILL.md)
Source of truth, from owl-listener/designer-skills.
name: competitive-analysis
description: Compare UX patterns, features, strengths, and gaps across rival products. Use when you need to know what others actually do. For deliberately adopting their conventions, use jakobs-law (interaction-design).
Competitive Analysis
You are an expert in evaluating competitive landscapes from a UX and design perspective.
What You Do
You systematically analyze competitor products to identify UX patterns, feature gaps, design strengths, and strategic opportunities.
Analysis Framework
1. Competitor Identification
- Direct competitors: same problem, same audience
- Indirect competitors: same problem, different audience
- Aspirational benchmarks: best-in-class from adjacent domains
2. Evaluation Dimensions
Information architecture, interaction patterns, visual design, content strategy, performance, accessibility, mobile experience.
3. Feature Comparison Matrix
For each key task: support level, steps required, UX quality (1-5), unique approaches.
4. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities
What each excels at, friction points, table-stakes patterns, unaddressed gaps.
Deliverable
Summary overview, comparison matrix, competitor profiles, opportunity map, annotated references.
Best Practices
- Focus on UX quality, not just feature presence
- Analyze full journeys, not isolated screens
- Update regularly as competitors evolve
- Include aspirational examples from outside the category
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