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| Criterion |  UX Research User Interviews |  Product Strategy Counter Metrics |  Facilitation Alignment Mapping |  Engineering Goal Question Metric |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | When a headline metric could mask side effects, it adds guardrail signals against unwanted outcomes. It connects customer value, product logic, and decision priorities. The result is captured as a counter-metric list and guardrail definitions. | When several people work toward one goal but hold different mental maps, Alignment Mapping makes the discrepancies visible. It arranges goals, assumptions, and priorities so shared direction becomes verifiable. | Helps clarify technical problems, hypotheses, and next steps in concrete terms. It breaks a technical problem into testable parts. The result is captured as a GQM table and metric briefs. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 30–60 min per interview | 30-60 min | 1-2 h | 90-180 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1 participant per interview | 2-6 | 4-12 | 3-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Interview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary | Counter Metric List, Guardrail Definitions | Alignment Map, Open Issues, Decision Questions | GQM Table, Metric Profiles |
Tagsno overlap | QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery | MetricsMeasurementStrategyExperiments | AlignmentStakeholdersStrategyFacilitation | MetricsMeasurementEngineeringAlignment |