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Selected:User InterviewsAssumption SurfacingARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Assumption Mapping
| Criterion |  UX Research User Interviews |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | 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. | 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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 30–60 min per interview | 45-90 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1 participant per interview | 2-8 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Interview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |