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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  Product Discovery Outcome-Driven Innovation |  UX Research Card Sorting |  UX Research Surveys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | Outcome-Driven Innovation clarifies customer problems, solution opportunities, and evidence. It separates jobs, desired outcomes, importance, satisfaction, and opportunity, and captures results as desired outcome statements, an opportunity landscape, and segments by underserved needs. | When content only makes sense internally and users can't find the structure again, card sorting exposes their mental order. Terms, groups, and naming are then aligned with the target group's expectations. | When a topic needs to be validated broadly and many people can answer the same question, surveys gather structured feedback in a scalable form. Answers become comparable and segmentable instead of remaining merely anecdotal. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | High | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | Mehrere Wochen | 20-45 min | 3-14 Tage |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 2-6 researchers plus sample | Based on research question | 50+ |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Desired outcome statements, Opportunity landscape, Segmentation by underserved needs, Innovation hypotheses | Content groups, Label set, IA hypotheses | Survey Results, Charts, Segment Insights |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | OutcomesInnovationResearchQuantitative | Information architectureNavigationStructure | QuantitativeResearchValidation |