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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  DevOps Blameless Postmortem |  Agile 4Ls Retrospective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 work processes are known only from accounts and the real context stays hidden, Contextual Inquiry makes behavior at the workplace visible. Observation and follow-up questions together show how people actually work, get interrupted, and improvise. | After an incident with damage or a near miss, the method creates a sober field for learning without assigning blame. It directs attention to the course of events, conditions, and effective countermeasures. | When a sprint should not only be assessed but also learned from, it captures experience in clear learning categories. It records what worked, what's missing, and what should run differently next time. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 1-3 Wochen | 30-90 min | 45–75 min |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 4-12 Beobachtungen | 3-12 | Team members involved |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Postmortem Doc, Action Items, Timeline | 4Ls Board, Learning Themes, Improvement Actions |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | UX researchObservationContext | Site Reliability EngineeringIncidentLearningReliability | RetrospectiveLearningReflectionTeam |