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| Criterion |  UX Research Customer Journey Mapping |  Innovation Starbursting |  UX Research Empathy Mapping |  Innovation Brainstorming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | Helps clarify ideas, open questions, and testable next steps in concrete terms. It opens the thinking space, collects ideas, and leads to testable options. The result is captured as a star-shaped question map, question list, and assumption list. | When a lot is assumed about a target group but little is seen jointly, empathy mapping makes knowledge and gaps directly comparable. The picture also shows which assumptions hold up and where evidence is missing. | When a team faces an open question with many obvious directions, the method first creates breadth instead of premature commitment. It separates idea flow from evaluation and makes lines of thought visible, creating a pool for selection and further development. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 2-4 h | 30-60 min | 30–60 min | 30-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-10 | 3-10 | 4-8 | 4-12 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Journey Map, Pain-point List, Opportunity Backlog | Star-Shaped Question Map, Question List, Assumption List | Empathy Map, Assumptions List, Research Gaps | Idea pool, Theme clusters, Shortlist |
Tagsno overlap | JourneyServiceService design | BrainstormingIdeationWorkshopDiscovery | SynthesisQualitativeWorkshop | BrainstormingIdeationCreativityWorkshopDivergence |