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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  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 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 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 | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 1-3 Wochen | 1-5 Tage |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 4-12 Beobachtungen | Nutzertraffic |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | UX researchObservationContext | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth |
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Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.
