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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  Operations PDCA Cycle |  Growth A/B Testing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 improvement that still has to prove itself in everyday work, the method runs it through small learning loops. It connects planning, checking, and standardization into a repeatable learning mode. | When two variants compete, discussions quickly decide by taste rather than effect. A/B Testing checks behavior under controlled conditions and separates real improvement from chance or expectation effects. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | High |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 1-3 Wochen | 1 h bis mehrere Wochen | 1-4 Wochen |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 4-12 Beobachtungen | 1-8 | 1-6 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | PDCA Log, Experiment Plan, Learning Outcome, Standard Change | Experiment results, Decision log, Learning summary |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | UX researchObservationContext | Continuous improvementLeanExperiments | ExperimentsGrowthAnalyticsValidation |