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Selected:ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Card SortingAssumption SurfacingAssumption Mapping
| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  UX Research Card Sorting |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | Plans often contain assumptions that were never openly stated and remain dangerous precisely because of that. Assumption Surfacing makes these silent premises visible and prioritizes which of them carry the initiative or could sink it. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 20-45 min | 45-90 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | Based on research question | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | 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 | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | Information architectureNavigationStructure | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |