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| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  UX Research Card Sorting |  Product Strategy Lean Canvas |  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. | When an early product bet still has too many open points, it brings target group, problem, and assumptions into a single view. It condenses the idea so core risks become nameable. | 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 | Medium | 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 | 1-6 | 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 | Lean Canvas, Core Assumptions, Experiment Backlog | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | Information architectureNavigationStructure | StartupLeanAssumptionsBusiness model | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |