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| Criterion |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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. | 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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Wochen | 20–45 min | 45-90 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-12 Beobachtungen | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchObservationContext | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |