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| Criterion |  UX Research Card Sorting |  Innovation Design Thinking |  UX Research User Interviews |  Product Discovery Outcome-Driven Innovation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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 teams derive needs only from assumptions and real motives are missing, user interviews give direct access to behavior and meaning. Conversations from the target group's everyday life make patterns, tensions, and open questions solidly visible. | Outcome-Driven Innovation clarifies customer problems, solution opportunities, and evidence. It separates jobs, desired outcomes, importance, satisfaction, and opportunity, and captures results as desired outcome statements, an opportunity landscape, and segments by underserved needs. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | High | Low | High |
Timedifferent | 20-45 min | 1 Tag bis mehrere Wochen | 30–60 min per interview | Mehrere Wochen |
Participantsdifferent | Based on research question | 4-10 | 1 participant per interview | 2-6 researchers plus sample |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Content groups, Label set, IA hypotheses | Problem Statement, Prototype, Test Learnings | Interview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary | Desired outcome statements, Opportunity landscape, Segmentation by underserved needs, Innovation hypotheses |
Tagsno overlap | Information architectureNavigationStructure | InnovationPrototypeResearch | QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery | OutcomesInnovationResearchQuantitative |