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| Criterion |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | When demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Wochen | 20–45 min | 1-5 Tage | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-12 Beobachtungen | Small cross-functional group | Nutzertraffic | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchObservationContext | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |