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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  Operations Causal Factor Analysis |  Systems Thinking Current Reality Tree |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | For an event with a complicated course, the method breaks down the contributing factors along the timeline. It shows how conditions, decisions, and reactions together produce a course of events. | A Current Reality Tree condenses many symptoms into a few causal chains. The method makes visible which core problems drive several negative effects at once. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | High | High |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 1-3 Wochen | 2-6 h | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 4-12 Beobachtungen | 3-10 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Event Timeline, Causal Factor Chart, Cause List, Corrective Actions | Current Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention Ideas |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | UX researchObservationContext | CausalityIncidentRoot causeTimeline | Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality |