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| Criterion |  UX Research Card Sorting |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  UX Research Diary Study |  Product Discovery Context Canvas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 work processes are known only from accounts and the real context stays hidden, Contextual Inquiry makes behavior at the workplace visible. Observation and follow-up questions together show how people actually work, get interrupted, and improvise. | When experiences build up over days or weeks and a single session cannot capture them, Diary Study records the course of everyday life. Recurring triggers, moods, and habits become visible this way, beyond the sharpness of memory. | When an environment of users, systems, and constraints is hard to grasp, it puts the context compactly on the table. It creates a clear reading of influence, boundary, and dependency. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 20-45 min | 1-3 Wochen | 1-4 Wochen | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Based on research question | 4-12 Beobachtungen | 5-20 | 3-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Content groups, Label set, IA hypotheses | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Context canvas, Open questions, Shared context notes |
Tagsno overlap | Information architectureNavigationStructure | UX researchObservationContext | UX researchTrackingBehavior | ContextFramingRequirementsCanvas |