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| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  UX Research User Interviews |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects. | 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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 30–60 min per interview | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 1 participant per interview | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Interview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |
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