View methods side by side.
Choose up to four methods. Add them using the search and share the comparison by copying its link.
| Criterion | ![]() Product Discovery Smoke Test | ![]() Architecture arc42 | ![]() Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |
|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | arc42 structures architecture knowledge so teams can document system, decisions, and risks consistently. The template builds a living understanding of the architecture instead of scattered notes. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-5 Tage | 1-2 Tage | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional |
Participantsdifferent | Nutzertraffic | 1-4 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Architecture Document, Context View, Runtime View, Deployment View | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions |
Tagsno overlap | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | ArchitectureDocumentationCommunication | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks |
Often compared together
Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.






