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| Criterion |  UX Research User Interviews |  Innovation Design Thinking |  UX Research Personas |  UX Research Empathy 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. | For complex user problems with an uncertain cause, the method connects observation, interpretation, and experiment into a learning cycle. It keeps the focus on real needs and avoids premature solution language. This produces robust decisions for product and service. | 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 a lot is assumed about a target group but little is seen jointly, empathy mapping makes knowledge and gaps directly comparable. The picture also shows which assumptions hold up and where evidence is missing. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | High | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 30–60 min per interview | 1 Tag bis mehrere Wochen | 1-3 Tage | 30–60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1 participant per interview | 4-10 | Internes Team | 4-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Interview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary | Problem Statement, Prototype, Test Learnings | Persona Profiles, Needs Summary, Scenario Notes | Empathy Map, Assumptions List, Research Gaps |
Tagsno overlap | QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery | InnovationPrototypeResearch | ResearchCustomerSynthesis | SynthesisQualitativeWorkshop |