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| Criterion |  UX Research User Interviews |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Architecture Request for Comments |  Architecture Architecture Decision Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects. | An RFC clarifies architecture context, options, and consequences. It structures technical context, alternatives, tradeoffs, open questions, and review feedback, and captures the result as an RFC document, reviewer comments, and a decision rationale. | An ADR permanently records an architecture decision with context, trade-offs, and consequence. It creates continuity for later changes because the decision path stays traceable. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 30–60 min per interview | 45-120 min | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung | 15-45 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1 participant per interview | 2-8 | 3-20 Reviewer | 1-3 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Interview Notes, Themes, Insight Summary | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale |
Tagsno overlap | QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance |