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Criterion
Design sheets and interface cards connect to jointly written pseudocode with highlighted unresolved questions.
Architecture
ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)
Paper illustration: scenarios and architectural decisions are connected to identified risks.
Architecture
ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method)
Paper illustration for Smoke Test.
Product Discovery
Smoke Test
Purposedifferent
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.ATAM helps teams weigh architecture decisions when quality goals compete. The team considers business goals, stakeholder expectations, and technical decisions together. The evaluation shows which risks need further investigation.When demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all.
Complexitydifferent
MediumHighLow
Timedifferent
2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additionalSeveral meetings plus preparation and analysis; total effort depends on scope1-5 Tage
Participantsdifferent
Designers, developers as users, and facilitationEvaluation team, architects, and relevant stakeholdersNutzertraffic
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncAsync
Outputdifferent
Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsPrioritized quality scenarios in a utility tree, Architecture risks with reasoning and assumptions, Sensitivity and trade-off points, Findings report with open investigationsInterest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note
Tagsno overlap
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
ArchitectureQualityRiskTradeoffsStakeholders
ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth
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Often compared together

Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.

Paper illustration of a calm four-quadrant Assumption Map with hypothesis cards and emphasis on important assumptions with little evidence.
Product Discovery
Assumption Mapping
Paper illustration for Fake Door Test
Product Discovery
Fake Door Test
Four paper stations connect system purpose, quality goals, risk cards and focused investigation with a target and gap profile.
Architecture
LASR (Lightweight Approach for Software Reviews)