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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  UX Research Customer Journey Mapping |  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. | When a user journey falls apart across many touchpoints, customer journey mapping makes the experience visible as a coherent arc. Phases, emotions, and breaks become legible enough to prioritize critical moments deliberately. | 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. |
Complexitysame | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 2-4 h | 1-3 Wochen |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 4-10 | 4-12 Beobachtungen |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Journey Map, Pain-point List, Opportunity Backlog | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | JourneyServiceService design | UX researchObservationContext |
Often compared together
Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.
