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| Criterion |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  UX Research Diary Study |  Operations Kepner-Tregoe |  Facilitation Decision Jam |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | For a disturbance that's hard to pin down, the method cleanly separates problem, cause, and decision. It reduces mixing when symptoms allow several interpretations. | When a decision is stuck, Decision Jam loosens the knot through structured separation of problem, idea, and selection. The format creates movement without jumping prematurely at the first seemingly elegant answer. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | High | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Wochen | 1-4 Wochen | 2-8 h | 60-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-12 Beobachtungen | 5-20 | 2-8 | 4-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis, Risk Plan | Problem Cluster, Prioritized Challenge, Experiment |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchObservationContext | UX researchTrackingBehavior | Problem solvingRoot causeDecisionOperations | FacilitationDecisionProblem solvingWorkshop |