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| Criterion |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  Decision Making Constraint Analysis |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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 an initiative stalls, the limit often lies not in the idea but in hard or soft boundary conditions. Constraint Analysis separates these limits and shows which of them can actually be shaped. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | In early initiatives with many uncertainties, planning quickly turns too optimistic. A pre-mortem makes the expected failure visible in advance and sharpens the view of causes, gaps, and countermeasures. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Wochen | 30-90 min | 45-60 min | 20–45 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-12 Beobachtungen | 2-8 | 2-8 | Small cross-functional group |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Constraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchObservationContext | ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning |