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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
Paper illustration of two people facing each other, speech bubbles and an open interview notebook.
UX Research
User Interviews
Paper illustration with architecture components and concrete change tasks for comparison.
Architecture
SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method)
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 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.SAAM helps teams judge an architecture’s suitability for selected tasks and changes. It is particularly useful for examining modifiability and comparing architecture alternatives with clear reasoning.
Complexitydifferent
MediumLowHigh
Timedifferent
1-3 Tage30–60 min per interviewPreparation, scenario analysis, and findings review; effort depends on scope
Participantsdifferent
Internes Team1 participant per interviewArchitecture experts and stakeholders for scenarios and weighting
Formatsame
Workshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Persona Profiles, Needs Summary, Scenario NotesInterview Notes, Themes, Insight SummaryDomain functions mapped to components and connections, Quality attributes and evaluation criteria, Typical tasks and their effects on the architecture, Reasoned evaluation or comparison of alternatives
Tagsno overlap
ResearchCustomerSynthesis
QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery
ArchitectureChangeAnalysisComparisonQuality
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Often compared together

Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.

Affinity Diagramming
UX Research
Affinity Diagramming
Paper illustration: scenarios and architectural decisions are connected to identified risks.
Architecture
ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method)
Paper illustration for Change Analysis.
Operations
Change Analysis
Empathy Mapping
UX Research
Empathy Mapping