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| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  UX Research Card Sorting |  Operations 5 Whys |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | When content only makes sense internally and users can't find the structure again, card sorting exposes their mental order. Terms, groups, and naming are then aligned with the target group's expectations. | For a single, hard-to-explain deviation, the method exposes the causal chain behind the visible symptom. It keeps the cause open until a controllable condition emerges instead of a mere description. | When a problem keeps recurring and the cause stays unclear, the method exposes the underlying mechanism. It separates symptom, guess, and robust explanation from one another. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 20-45 min | 15-30 min | 1-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | Based on research question | 2-6 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Content groups, Label set, IA hypotheses | Root cause notes, Countermeasures | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | Information architectureNavigationStructure | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident |