Task-Based Audience Segmentation

Design research is something that is widely practiced to produce anything from a better version of tax software to a new toy for kids. Its purpose is to understand customers (users) and match products to them. To date, most corporate and nonprofit research has focused either on persuading someone towards a 'purchase decision' or asking current users what they’d like added to a product.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2005). Design>Usability>Audience Analysis

Tips for Getting to Know Your Audience

Effective communication requires understanding the target population and how it operates. That need to understand runs the gamut: sometimes it's simply information gathering, other times it's copy testing, or it may mean monitoring the effectiveness of a campaign. But before you start any campaign, you need to know your audience.

Reagan, Joey. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Audience Analysis>Rhetoric

Tracking Your Users in the Access Logs

Most server log analysis applications on the market simply present usage information grouped by date with sub-groupings like daily averages and top downloads by file size. While this can be useful, it doesn't begin to touch the range of information available to be gleaned from the logs with a little creativity.

Hoyt, Philip. evolt (2005). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Uncovering True Motivation: The Whys and Wherefore

As a designer of software systems, I believe that the child's spirit of 'why' is something to retain and infuse into our work when gathering requirements, interviewing users, and interviewing stakeholders.

McDaniel, Scott M. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>Audience Analysis

Understanding the Customer's Business Context  

As an internal supplier of network and system management software, our organization faces significant challenges in assessing and enhancing the value of our products to customers. Traditionally, these types of products focus narrowly on meeting the technical needs of a single user constituency, without considering their impact on customers' overall business. This paper describes an ongoing project to investigate how to increase the perceived and actual value of our products by considering customers' business context. It describes how we got buy-in, what we learned about users and usability, and how we communicate our findings.

Cole, Candace P. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Usability>Audience Analysis

Unsuspected Correlations Are Sweet!

Tracking web usage with a one dimensional mindset (or in a silo) means that you will end up missing so much of the picture.

Kaushik, Avinash. Occam's Razor (2006). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Usability Means User-Centred Design  

To create usable products you must be user-centred throughout your development process: from setting goals to installation. Two case studies illustrate why this is important. User-centred design is about actively involving users and understanding their requirements. It is necessarily iterative and multi-disciplinary. User-centred design requires commitment from your organisation or your client and yourself. Choosing your activities to match the level of acceptance of usability in your audience will help to create that commitment.

Jarrett, Caroline. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Usability>Audience Analysis

User Research Abroad: Handle Logistics in Four Easy Steps

In our industry, we are often asked to conduct non-directed interviews by telephone with audiences around the globe. This presents several logistical challenges.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2004). Articles>Usability>Audience Analysis>International

Users' Documentation Preferences

At a user group meeting in 2007, TechScribe researched users' experiences of the software documentation that they receive. Do they prefer online or printed documentation? Do they read the manual, or do they call the help desk? How important is background information? Which is more useful, a 'how to' user guide or a reference manual? Do people prefer explanations using visuals, descriptions, or a combination? Read the survey to find the answers (we obtained 29 responses from 64 attendees).

Unwalla, Mike. TechScribe (2007). Articles>Documentation>Audience Analysis>Technical Writing

Using Audience Analysis to Make Design Decisions for Computer Documentation  

Software documentation writers frequently fail to consider the broad range of their users, limiting themselves to overly simple audience breakdowns such as novice, intermediate, and expert. Before writing, technical writers should analyze their audience based on considerations such as the users’ physical environment, learning preferences, skill levels, objectives, and computer systems. Once this audience information is obtained, writers should create design models that accommodate as many of these users as possible.

Bringhurst, Robert G. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Documentation>Audience Analysis

Using Your Web Stats for SEO: Search Marketing Analysis from Web Stats

Last week, Jennifer covered the basics of web statistics and what they should mean for you. Now that you have a fairly good handle on what all these statistics mean, how do you put them to work for you? These concerns are answered in this article.

Sullivan Cassidy, Jennifer. SEOchat (2005). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Visits, Visitors, and Hits  

What do people mean when they talk about 'hits,' 'visits,' and 'visitors?'

Fleishman, Glenn. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Web Analytics: Insights From the Front Line, Part 2

2008 will see a more serious attempt to get Web analytics to become a part of business analytics. We're still a silo in most companies (data and people). We'll see more collaboration and innovation in helping Web data become a core part of the company data to truly give end-to-end visibility (and maybe the holy grail of multichannel analytics/impact).

Mason, Neil. ClickZ (2008). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Web Site Stats: A Look Behind The Numbers

In the dot.com boom of the 1990s, an electronic goldrush began as companies flocked like new age prospectors seeking to plant their stake in this digital revolution that has today transformed the ways companies communicate and do business around the globe. Because the web is becoming a viable communications channel, it's important that communications professionals understand how the content they're putting up on a web site is delivering to users the kind of value that is realizing a return on their investment.

Gannon, Joseph P. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Web Statistics: The Truth is in There  

In this study, we assessed and restructured Web server log statistics to analyze our customers’ use of a large-scale Internet library. We formulated questions about how these users might be accessing and navigating the information, then developed our own tools to sort and gather relevant statistics from the log files. We discuss specific successful procedures as well as limitations of the methods. Some of our findings may result in further redesign of the Web site. We also identify areas of interest for further research.

Hood, Teresa L., Linda Jorgensen and Leo J. Smith. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

What Is Success?

Although it is true that designers generally rely on clients, pleasing them is not the ultimate purpose of our work. What designers share with our clients is a public, an audience. Our clients wouldn't need us at all if we weren't helping them reach that public. Our broader responsibility is to the ultimate users of our work.

Lupton, Ellen. AIGA (2007). Careers>Graphic Design>Audience Analysis

What to Know About Your Audiences

If you provide your audience value in your publications equal to the effort or expense they put out, they will continue to come back. You will have created a stable system that continues to draw the audience and provide your organization with the value it deserves in return for its efforts.

Boiko, Bob. Content Management Professionals (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis

Filtering and Withdrawing: Strategies for Coping with Information Overload in Everyday Contexts    

The study investigates the ways in which people experience information overload in the context of monitoring everyday events through media such as newspapers and the internet. The findings are based on interviews with 20 environmental activists in Finland in 2005. The perceptions of the seriousness of problems caused by information overload varied among the participants. On the one hand, information overload was experienced as a real problem particularly in the networked information environments. On the other hand, information overload was perceived as an imagined problem with some mythical features. Two major strategies for coping with information overload were identified. The filtering strategy is based on the determined weeding out of material deemed useless. This strategy is favoured in networked information environments. The withdrawal strategy is more affectively oriented, emphasizing the need to protect oneself from excessive information supply by keeping the number of information sources to a minimum.

Savolainen, Reijo. Journal of Information Science (2007). Articles>Information Design>Audience Analysis>User Centered Design

Join the (User) Group

Here’s a complaint I’ve heard from most of the technical writers I’ve met: “I never get to meet my users.” User input helps us decide what content to include and in what form, and can confirm whether our books are effective. But getting user input can be difficult—at least I thought so, until I discovered a fun way to meet hundreds of users each year.

Heninger, Barbara L. Indus (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Community Building>Audience Analysis

Simple Cognition Facts!

Sometimes users find it difficult to perform tasks based on the information provided. Take a minute to understand why this could happen.

Abraham, Anitha. Indus (2008). Articles>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis>Cognitive Psychology

Design Decisions vs. Audience Considerations

Deep down below the layers of interface, CSS, HTML, and XML—down where only the geekiest among us roam—everything comes down to this: it’s all zeroes and ones. On or off. The digital switch Though interaction and conversion becomes a bit more complicated at the point the interface meets the visitor, though there are a few more shades of gray, in the end it comes down to the same thing: yes or no.

Ragle-Davis, Robin. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Audience Analysis

Analyzing Your Traffic  

Discover your site’s findability triumphs and tragedies with traffic analysis systems.

Walter, Aarron. Building Findable Websites (2008). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

What Does Your Audience Want?

Successful visual designers well know the audiences they are designing for, and realize that their audiences exist at multiple levels.

Knemeyer, Dirk. Thread Information Design (2003). Design>Graphic Design>Audience Analysis>Rhetoric

Web Log Analysis

Getting to know your audience is key to designing a successful website. Because your audience may be spread around the world, learning about the users of your site may be quite a challenge. Even if you think you have a pretty good idea of who your audience is, in many cases, there's a lot of information that you won't know--for example, what browsers your users are using, whether or not they are connecting from on or off campus, or what pages they find most useful.

Novogrodsky, Seth. University of California Berkeley (2000). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

What's Important to Measure on Your Website?

Websites are very measurable. However, reams of data can be time consuming and confusing. The knack is to know what is really important to measure. This includes the following: reader actions; reader numbers; most and least popular pages; subscribers; external links; search keywords; page size; broken links and malfunctioning processes.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis