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| Criterion |  UX Research User Interviews |  Operations Kepner-Tregoe |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 a disturbance that's hard to pin down, the method cleanly separates problem, cause, and decision. It reduces mixing when symptoms allow several interpretations. | When a problem keeps recurring and the cause stays unclear, the method exposes the underlying mechanism. It separates symptom, guess, and robust explanation from one another. | When a problem has several possible contributing factors, the method sorts causes by cause areas. It prevents an initial hunch from blocking the view of other plausible drivers. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | High | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 30–60 min per interview | 2-8 h | 1-4 h | 30-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1 participant per interview | 2-8 | 3-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Interview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary | Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis, Risk Plan | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog |
Tagsno overlap | QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery | Problem solvingRoot causeDecisionOperations | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeQualityOperations |