Some Stategies for Addressing the Changing Audience  

'Know your user!' is the first thing every aspiring technical communicator learns. Everyone agrees that understanding the technical skills and needs of your audience is essential to producing high quality technical documentation. However, knowing exactly who your audience is and what they need from documentation is no longer an easy task. The increase in international markets, multiculturalism in America, end the number of people using software products for the first time all mean that the audience you knew so well a short time ago may not be the same audience using your documentation today. As technical communicators, we can no longer assume that our users' language and technical skills remain stable over a long period of time. How to assess and meet the needs of a changing audience is a challenge many technical communicators face today.

Lopes, Jeff and Kimberly E. Willis. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Audience Analysis>Usability