Competitive Teardown

The first 10 questions

This is where the conversation starts. Each answer shapes what gets asked next.

1. 01What feature or flow are you tearing down, and what product does it live in (or will it live in)?
2. 02Which real, shipped products should we use as references — ones you admire or that are known to do this flow well? Name at least three, and we can pull up how they actually do it.
3. 03What job is the user trying to get done in this flow, and in what context — device, frequency, how much urgency or focus they have?
4. 04What prompted this teardown — a redesign, a fresh build, or a specific problem users keep hitting?
5. 05What does 'good' look like for this flow? How will you tell a pattern worth adopting from one that's just trendy?
6. 06What hard constraints shape what you can actually adopt — platform, brand, existing tech, team capacity?
7. 07If you already have a version of this flow, where does it fall short of the references today? Be specific.
8. 08Which reference's approach would you be wary of copying — where might their solution not fit your users or context?
9. 09Which specific screens or moments in the flow do you want compared side by side — empty state, onboarding, the core action, errors, an upgrade prompt? List them.
10. 10For each reference product, what's the single pattern or decision that stands out — and what makes it work?

+ 5 more questions across discovery, validation, and the creative brief — each one adapting to what you've already said.

Related product design project types

• Product ValidationTest whether your product idea is worth building before you build it — with a clear validation plan and a landing-page wireframe to test demand with.
• MVP ScopeDefine what your minimum viable product actually is — the smallest thing you can ship to test your core hypothesis with real customers.
• MVP Scope MatrixTurn your MVP Scope work into a shareable visual — a prioritized matrix plotting each feature by value vs. effort, so the right cuts to make before you start building are obvious.