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Selected:Current Reality TreeSurveysARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Causal Factor Analysis
| Criterion |  Systems Thinking Current Reality Tree |  UX Research Surveys |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Operations Causal Factor Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | A Current Reality Tree condenses many symptoms into a few causal chains. The method makes visible which core problems drive several negative effects at once. | When a topic needs to be validated broadly and many people can answer the same question, surveys gather structured feedback in a scalable form. Answers become comparable and segmentable instead of remaining merely anecdotal. | ARID examines how well developers can work with a technical design. It focuses on a part of the system that can still be revised, between the architecture overview and the detailed specification. | For an event with a complicated course, the method breaks down the contributing factors along the timeline. It shows how conditions, decisions, and reactions together produce a course of events. |
Complexitydifferent | High | Medium | Medium | High |
Timedifferent | 2-6 h | 3-14 Tage | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | 3-8 | 50+ | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 3-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Current Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention Ideas | Survey Results, Charts, Segment Insights | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Event Timeline, Causal Factor Chart, Cause List, Corrective Actions |
Tagsno overlap | Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality | QuantitativeResearchValidation | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | CausalityIncidentRoot causeTimeline |