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Selected:Affinity DiagrammingUser InterviewsARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Empathy Mapping
| Criterion |  UX Research Affinity Diagramming |  UX Research User Interviews |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  UX Research Empathy Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When research notes, feedback, or observations sit unconnected side by side, affinity diagramming sorts the raw material into solid themes. Many individual points turn into patterns that make decisions and opportunities clearer. | When teams derive needs only from assumptions and real motives are missing, user interviews give direct access to behavior and meaning. Conversations from the target group's everyday life make patterns, tensions, and open questions solidly visible. | ARID examines how well developers can work with a technical design. It focuses on a part of the system that can still be revised, between the architecture overview and the detailed specification. | When a lot is assumed about a target group but little is seen jointly, empathy mapping makes knowledge and gaps directly comparable. The picture also shows which assumptions hold up and where evidence is missing. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 45–90 min | 30–60 min per interview | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 30–60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-10 | 1 participant per interview | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 4-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Theme clusters, Insight statements, Opportunity areas | Interview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Empathy Map, Assumptions List, Research Gaps |
Tagsno overlap | SynthesisQualitativeRoot cause | QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | SynthesisQualitativeWorkshop |