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| Criterion | ![]() UX Research Diary Study | ![]() Operations 5 Whys | ![]() Delivery Value Stream Mapping | ![]() Operations Root Cause Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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 single, hard-to-explain deviation, the method exposes the causal chain behind the visible symptom. It keeps the cause open until a controllable condition emerges instead of a mere description. | When delivery work dissolves into wait times, handoffs, and hidden effort, Value Stream Mapping makes the actual flow visible. The method exposes bottlenecks, idle time, and feedback loops so lead time and improvement levers become tangible. | When a problem keeps recurring and the cause stays unclear, the method exposes the underlying mechanism. It separates symptom, guess, and robust explanation from one another. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 15-30 min | 1-3 h | 1-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 2-6 | 4-10 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Root cause notes, Countermeasures | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident |



