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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  UX Research Card Sorting |  Product Discovery Outcome-Driven Innovation |  Innovation Design Thinking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | When content only makes sense internally and users can't find the structure again, card sorting exposes their mental order. Terms, groups, and naming are then aligned with the target group's expectations. | Outcome-Driven Innovation clarifies customer problems, solution opportunities, and evidence. It separates jobs, desired outcomes, importance, satisfaction, and opportunity, and captures results as desired outcome statements, an opportunity landscape, and segments by underserved needs. | For complex user problems with an uncertain cause, the method connects observation, interpretation, and experiment into a learning cycle. It keeps the focus on real needs and avoids premature solution language. This produces robust decisions for product and service. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | High | High |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 20-45 min | Mehrere Wochen | 1 Tag bis mehrere Wochen |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | Based on research question | 2-6 researchers plus sample | 4-10 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Content groups, Label set, IA hypotheses | Desired outcome statements, Opportunity landscape, Segmentation by underserved needs, Innovation hypotheses | Problem Statement, Prototype, Test Learnings |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | Information architectureNavigationStructure | OutcomesInnovationResearchQuantitative | InnovationPrototypeResearch |