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| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Innovation Design Thinking |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Product Discovery Fake Door 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. | For complex user problems with an uncertain cause, the method connects observation, interpretation, and experiment into a learning cycle. It keeps the focus on real needs and avoids premature solution language. This produces robust decisions for product and service. | 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. | When demand is still unclear, it measures interest in a feature before it is built. It separates real behavior from polite agreement and deliberately keeps build effort small. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | High | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 1 Tag bis mehrere Wochen | 1-5 Tage | 1-5 Tage |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 4-10 | Nutzertraffic | Nutzertraffic |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Problem Statement, Prototype, Test Learnings | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Click Data, Interest Signal, Learning Decision |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | InnovationPrototypeResearch | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | ValidationExperimentsDemandDiscovery |