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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  UX Research Card Sorting |  Product Discovery Pretotyping |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | Pretotyping clarifies whether a customer problem and solution idea create enough real demand. It separates problem, assumption, solution, and evidence, and captures the result as a pretotyping sketch, test setup, and conversion data. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 20-45 min | Stunden bis wenige Tage | 1-5 Tage |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | Based on research question | 1-4 | Nutzertraffic |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Content groups, Label set, IA hypotheses | Pretotyping sketch, Test setup, Conversion data, Go or no-go decision | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | Information architectureNavigationStructure | ValidationDemandMVP | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth |