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| Criterion |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  UX Research Diary Study |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  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 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. | 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. | 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 | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Wochen | 1-4 Wochen | 45-90 min | 20–45 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-12 Beobachtungen | 5-20 | 2-8 | Small cross-functional group |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchObservationContext | UX researchTrackingBehavior | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning |