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| Criterion |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  Decision Making Decision Tree |  UX Research Diary Study |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | For decisions with follow-on paths and dependencies, a linear comparison is often not enough. A Decision Tree shows how options branch under conditions and which consequences hang on each branch. | 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. | With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects. |
Complexitysame | Medium | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Wochen | 30-90 min | 1-4 Wochen | 45-120 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-12 Beobachtungen | 1-6 | 5-20 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Decision Tree, Option Map, Assumption List | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchObservationContext | DecisionTreeOptions | UX researchTrackingBehavior | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions |