The big idea: Product analysis is not a chapter at the start of a folder. It happens at four different points in the design process, and it answers a different question each time.
Its value is that it makes an existing product into evidence — the cheapest research available, because thousands of people have already found its faults.
Five stages. Product analysis feeds the first two, informs the third, and closes the last.
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| When | The question it answers | What it feeds |
|---|---|---|
| Empathizing | What does the current product do, and where does it fail its users? | The pain points on the journey, and the persona's frustration |
| Defining the project | What are the baseline numbers a new design must beat? | Specification criteria, each with a figure to improve on |
| Ideation | How do other products — including unrelated ones — solve this? | Principles to borrow, and approaches already known to fail |
| Evaluating | Did the new design actually beat the old one? | A before-and-after comparison on the same measurements |
The baseline is the point: Without an analysis of the existing product, "better" is an opinion.
With one, the final evaluation reads: tipped at 4 kg before and 7 kg after; 6 of 20 first-time users unaided before, 17 of 20 after. That comparison is only possible because somebody measured the old product at the start.
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What a designer gets from it
Free research at scale
Thousands of people have used the existing product and found its faults. Analysing it costs a morning and produces findings no interview would reach.
The rationale behind decisions
Reverse engineering recovers WHY: a standard, a patent, an assembly cost. That tells you what a redesign would have to give up as well as gain.
A measurable target
Every baseline number becomes a criterion to beat, so the specification is grounded in something real rather than in ambition.
Protection from re-solving a solved problem
The part you cannot explain is usually there for a reason. Removing it blind reintroduces a failure somebody fixed years ago.
The risk of analysing only your own market: Analysing the products you compete with tells you what everybody in that market assumes — including the assumptions that are wrong.
Analyse something from outside as well: the principle that solves your problem has usually already been found somewhere it was not called the same thing.
How this is tested — the purpose of a product analysis task and why it matters to development. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — multiple choice
- Identify the stage a stated analysis question belongs to.
- Pick what a baseline measurement makes possible.
Paper 2 — analysing a product
- Explain why product analysis matters across a named product's development.
- Justify analysing a product from outside the market.
The trap: Treating product analysis as a single task at the start. It happens at four points, and the one at the END — the before-and-after comparison — is what makes the evaluation evidence rather than opinion.
Explain why product analysis matters at more than one point in the development of a redesigned hospital bedside table.
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