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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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. | 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 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 | 1-4 Wochen | 45-90 min | 20–45 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 2-8 | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |