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Selected:Card SortingAssumption MappingARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Assumption Surfacing
| Criterion |  UX Research Card Sorting |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | 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. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 20-45 min | 45-60 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Based on research question | 2-8 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Content groups, Label set, IA hypotheses | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | Information architectureNavigationStructure | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |