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| Criterion |  UX Research Card Sorting |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | 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 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 assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 20-45 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 1-5 Tage | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | Based on research question | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | Nutzertraffic | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Content groups, Label set, IA hypotheses | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | Information architectureNavigationStructure | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |