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| Criterion |  UX Research User Interviews |  UX Research Personas |  Operations Causal Factor Analysis |  Systems Thinking Current Reality Tree |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 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. | For an event with a complicated course, the method breaks down the contributing factors along the timeline. It shows how conditions, decisions, and reactions together produce a course of events. | A Current Reality Tree condenses many symptoms into a few causal chains. The method makes visible which core problems drive several negative effects at once. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | High | High |
Timedifferent | 30–60 min per interview | 1-3 Tage | 2-6 h | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | 1 participant per interview | Internes Team | 3-10 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Interview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary | Persona Profiles, Needs Summary, Scenario Notes | Event Timeline, Causal Factor Chart, Cause List, Corrective Actions | Current Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention Ideas |
Tagsno overlap | QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery | ResearchCustomerSynthesis | CausalityIncidentRoot causeTimeline | Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality |