Audience Analysis and Information Design: Creating a Needs Assessment Documentation Strategy  

A user needs assessment developed from extensive audience analysis can be used to develop a documentation strategy that effectively meets user needs. This paper provides an overview of the steps required to identify and analyze the various audiences critical to enterprise software documentation and create a needsassessment- based strategy.

Yeats, Dave and Paula Kozlowski. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis

Design Success Through User Research and Iterative Testing  

Intuit was faced with serious usability problems causing high support call volumes for one of its major payroll software products. Improving training and online help did not solve these usability problems. Results from research techniques such as usability studies and customer site visits supported a software interface redesign that raised performance as much as from 13% to 89% success for customers' most critical tasks (for novice users with no training). This paper describes how several different strategies combined to yield design success: using multiple data gathering techniques to converge on an understanding of customers' problems and details of software redesign, iteratively prototyping and testing until performance reached desired levels, and using diverse sources for design suggestions. Applicability of these strategies to other projects will be emphasized.

Petrick, M. Susan and Mark Keavney. STC Proceedings (2005). Design>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis

Engagement: Should We Care?

These days, the idea of customer engagement is almost as hot as Web 2.0--and almost as controversial. As busy UX professionals, should we invest our time and energy in caring about engagement, or is it just another buzzword? I think we do need to understand customer engagement, so that, at a minimum, we can respond intelligently to questions about it from marketers or executives. We might even glean some useful insights from thinking about engagement. This column aims to cut through the hype and reveal the potential value of engagement.

Jones, Colleen. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis

From Formalism to Social Significance in Communication Design  

At the heart of design is the goal of communication, and instilling a belief in the audience about the past, present, or future. Historically, graphic and advertising design, fields within communication design, have oriented around clients and deliverables, and have maintained a focus on translating written or spoken messages into visual communication. Designers of visual communications—graphic design and the related areas of advertising: brand and identities, Web sites, and posters and photomontages—have largely relied on the designer’s intuition and training to create appropriate visual messages.

Forlizzi, Jodi and Cherie Lebbon. Design Issues (2002). Design>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis

Getting to Know Your Audience Through Customer Visits  

Getting to know your audience is not an easy task. Telephone interviews and written surveys are helpful, but the most effective way to really understand customer needs is through face-to-face contact. A successful program of customer visits requires thoughtful planning and organization. You need to identify clear objectives, develop a discussion guide, select the appropriate customers to visit, conduct the interviews, and determine how to analyze and communicate the results. You’ll also want to develop an action plan to follow-up on what you learn. We visited 12 customers in 6 weeks. Here is our story. . .

Kagan, Lisa. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>User Centered 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

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

Thirteen Common Objections Against User Requirements Analysis

Outlines some common objections to doing user research and provides some defense against them.

D'Hertefelt, Sim. InformationArchitect.com (2000). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Audience Analysis

The Road to Personas    

Who are your users? How do they work? How do your products fit into their routines? Filippo discusses audience analysis and developing user profiles to create effective user assistance.

Filippo, Elizabeth G. Intercom (2009). Articles>User Centered Design>Personas>Audience Analysis

Know Your Site

A good starting point for planning the future of your website is to analyze what you already have. To some extent we are doing this all the time. That is how new projects happen. However, a more formal approach helps to better inform your decision-making throughout the web project. There are two ways to better understand your current website: qualitative and quantitative.

Boag, Paul. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis

User Research for Personas and Other Audience Models

This is not going to be an article about personas or even what distinguishes a good persona from a bad one. Instead, this article is about the ingredients we can draw on when creating audience models and some alternative ways of communicating the results of an audience analysis. First, however, let me briefly discuss what we generally mean when we talk about personas and the role they play in the design and development process.

Baty, Steve. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis>Personas

Changing the Rules of the Game for the Benefit of the User

In this presentation, Joe Sokohl talks about gathering user research prior to designing and implementing your help deliverables.

Sokohl, Joe. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>Documentation>Audience Analysis>User Centered Design