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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | In early initiatives with many uncertainties, planning quickly turns too optimistic. A pre-mortem makes the expected failure visible in advance and sharpens the view of causes, gaps, and countermeasures. | 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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 20–45 min | 1-5 Tage | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | Small cross-functional group | Nutzertraffic | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |