View methods side by side.
Choose up to four methods. Add them using the search and share the comparison by copying its link.
| Criterion |  Engineering Fault Isolation |  Product Discovery Pretotyping |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | In technical failures, the visible symptom often gets mixed up with the actual cause. Fault Isolation narrows the fault space and progressively reduces which part of the system is truly affected. | Pretotyping clarifies whether a customer problem and solution idea create enough real demand. It separates problem, assumption, solution, and evidence, and captures the result as a pretotyping sketch, test setup, and conversion data. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | 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 | Low | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 30-180 min | Stunden bis wenige Tage | 45-60 min | 1-5 Tage |
Participantsdifferent | 1-6 | 1-4 | 2-8 | Nutzertraffic |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Fault Isolation Map, Test Log, Excluded Hypotheses, Narrowed Fault Area | Pretotyping sketch, Test setup, Conversion data, Go or no-go decision | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note |
Tagsno overlap | TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering | ValidationDemandMVP | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth |