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| Criterion |  UX Research Personas |  UX Research Usability Testing |  UX Research User Interviews |  Innovation Design Thinking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | When a product is built but people get stuck on tasks, usability testing shows the friction at concrete points. Observed use instead of self-report makes visible where orientation, understanding, or interaction breaks down. | 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. | For complex user problems with an uncertain cause, the method connects observation, interpretation, and experiment into a learning cycle. It keeps the focus on real needs and avoids premature solution language. This produces robust decisions for product and service. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | High |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Tage | 1-2 h je Session | 30–60 min per interview | 1 Tag bis mehrere Wochen |
Participantsdifferent | Internes Team | Based on research question | 1 participant per interview | 4-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Persona Profiles, Needs Summary, Scenario Notes | Usability Issues, Severity List, Recommendations | Interview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary | Problem Statement, Prototype, Test Learnings |
Tagsno overlap | ResearchCustomerSynthesis | ValidationUXPrototype | QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery | InnovationPrototypeResearch |