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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  Systems Thinking Futures Wheel |  Product Discovery Context Canvas |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | The Futures Wheel helps explore the consequences of a decision, a trend, or a strategic move in a structured way. It makes visible which first, second, and third-order effects could arise from an event. | When an environment of users, systems, and constraints is hard to grasp, it puts the context compactly on the table. It creates a clear reading of influence, boundary, and dependency. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 60-120 min | 45-90 min | 1-3 Wochen |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 3-10 | 3-10 | 4-12 Beobachtungen |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Futures Wheel, Consequence Chains, Strategic Signals | Context canvas, Open questions, Shared context notes | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | ForesightSystems thinkingSignals | ContextFramingRequirementsCanvas | UX researchObservationContext |