05 · Freelance 2025–26 · Kanslo (pre-seed startup)

The Empty Corner of a Crowded Category

Every way the team proposed to position the app quietly assumed something about its competitors. Nobody had mapped them. What did the competition actually look like?
MethodsA competitive map from seven competitor briefs, six interviews and the literature, on two axes I had to define first. Each candidate positioning drawn as the claim it made about everyone else. Written up as a decision memo with Claude Code.
Key findingSaying “we are like this” always says “they are like that”. Once that was on paper, the team disagreed about how to categorise the competitors, and that disagreement was the useful conversation. A static category didn't survive it.
What changedThe team took the second map forward and began treating positioning, ours and the competitors', as situational and in need of adjustment rather than a corner to own.

Align

Same seven competitors, same horizontal axis. Only the vertical question changes.

NOBODY HERE builds capability and expects to be outgrown restrictors gamified / compulsive GRADUATION UTILITY COMPULSION ↑ design intent for the user–product relationship the goal TOO MUCH RIGHT AMOUNT TOO LITTLE CANDIDATE POSITION B sustained right amount CANDIDATE POSITION A during the programme, then less ↑ how much users end up using the product environment action the person ← depth of intervention: what does the product actually change? →

THE INSTRUMENT. The vertical axis is design intent: what each product is built to do to its user. Seven competitors placed from their briefs, six interviews and the literature. Left to right is what a product changes: the environment, the action in the moment, or the person's own capability. The empty corner was the provocation.

STRUCTURAL SKETCH, NOT A BENCHMARK. Placements are inferred from the synthesis: user reviews, longitudinal complaints and fade-out patterns. No product in the category publishes the outcome data this lens would need to be rigorous. The signal is real but the precision is low. The two candidate positions are claims about what the design could achieve, not verified outcomes.

CLIENT WORK. COMPETITORS AND THE PRODUCT'S OWN CANDIDATE POSITIONS ANONYMISED HERE.

Both maps from the memo, redrawn on one frame. Choosing the two axes was the analysis; placing the competitors on them took an afternoon. Map B keeps the horizontal axis and asks a different question on the vertical: not what a product is, but whether users end up using it the right amount. Map B is the one the team took forward.

The storyNobody had made the disagreement tangible, so I did. My job was not to gather new data but to force the evidence we had, seven competitor briefs, six interviews and the literature, into a shape that could be argued with: two axes, every competitor placed on them, and each position the team had been proposing drawn as what it implied about the rest of the field. Having something concrete to challenge clarified the conversation. The arguments over where a competitor belonged surfaced the assumptions the weeks of debate had been circling. The second map, which asks whether users end up using each product the right amount, is the one the team kept. It reframed positioning from a category to hold into a position that moves with the situation. I labelled it a structural sketch rather than a benchmark, because nobody in this category publishes outcome data.

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