Better user experiences, stronger outcomes.

When guests first arrived at the Adobe Creative Café event in St. Louis on July 17th, they were greeted not just by the buzz of anticipation, but by hands-on fun. Attendees could dive straight into creativity with a custom patch project—choosing from hats or belt bags to make their own wearable art. A build-a-pen station let everyone craft a tool as unique as their ideas, while a photo booth captured the excitement with snapshots of friends and new connections. Food and drinks flowed to keep the conversations lively and the energy high. It was the kind of welcome that set the tone for a night dedicated to imagination and connection. It was pure creative magic from start to finish.

UX design is not about reinventing the wheel. Our artistic side might want to deliver something more creative and original, but our more practical technical side knows that users crave simplicity and familiarity. It would be frustrating as a user if every website and application you interacted with had a different way of organizing information and interacting with elements. So when it comes to designing a product, it’s important to take inspiration from existing competitors. Competitive analysis describes the process of researching and analyzing products with functionality similar to that of the product you’re building. This gives the designer a good list of do’s and don’t’s, while also providing stakeholders with an idea of how the product can succeed. Examining similar products helps designers build a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.