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Criterion
Paper illustration of two user profile cards with a goal, behavior evidence, and an open research question.
UX Research
Personas
Design sheets and interface cards connect to jointly written pseudocode with highlighted unresolved questions.
Architecture
ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)
Paper illustration of an assumption matrix with prioritized test cards
Decision Making
Assumption Surfacing
Paper illustration of two people facing each other, speech bubbles and an open interview notebook.
UX Research
User Interviews
Purposedifferent
When target groups stay too vague and teams talk about the same people differently, personas create a shared, solid picture of usage. Condensed profiles make needs, contexts, and differences tangible enough for decisions.ARID examines how well developers can work with a technical design. It focuses on a part of the system that can still be revised, between the architecture overview and the detailed specification.Plans often contain assumptions that were never openly stated and remain dangerous precisely because of that. Assumption Surfacing makes these silent premises visible and prioritizes which of them carry the initiative or could sink it.When teams derive needs only from assumptions and real motives are missing, user interviews give direct access to behavior and meaning. Conversations from the target group's everyday life make patterns, tensions, and open questions solidly visible.
Complexitydifferent
MediumMediumLowLow
Timedifferent
1-3 Tage2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional45-90 min30–60 min per interview
Participantsdifferent
Internes TeamDesigners, developers as users, and facilitation2-81 participant per interview
Formatsame
Workshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Persona Profiles, Needs Summary, Scenario NotesPrioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsAssumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning PlanInterview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary
Tagsno overlap
ResearchCustomerSynthesis
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery
QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery
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