View methods side by side.
Choose up to four methods. Add them using the search and share the comparison by copying its link.
| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  Engineering Kanban |  Delivery Value Stream 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. | 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. | When work sits in too many parallel streams, throughput suffers and no one sees the bottlenecks. Kanban makes the flow of work visible and limits overload so a system becomes calmer and more predictable. | When delivery work dissolves into wait times, handoffs, and hidden effort, Value Stream Mapping makes the actual flow visible. The method exposes bottlenecks, idle time, and feedback loops so lead time and improvement levers become tangible. |
Complexitysame | Medium | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 1-3 Wochen | Ongoing | 1-3 h |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 4-12 Beobachtungen | 2-12 | 4-10 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | UX researchObservationContext | FlowVisual managementDelivery | LeanFlowWasteDelivery |