Andrew Powell's Flex, Java, ColdFusion, and AJAX Blog

Nov 25Variations on Shakespeare: Know Thy Audience

This is the first in a series of posts in which we will address the six questions posed in The Art and Science of User Experience.

One of the first questions we have to ask in the practice of creating great user experiences (UX) is "Who Is The Audience?". At first glance, this question seems to be pretty easy to answer, but as we ponder it more, it becomes one of the most difficult and essential questions to answer in designing our UX. Not every audience is the same. If you address every audience as the same, then there's a good chance your message will miss its mark.

Understanding The Audience Will Help You Understand The Requirements

The process of learning your audience is a bit time consuming and can seem to be a waste of effort, but on the technical side, it can be quite helpful. If you take the time to learn who your audience is and how they want to tell their story, then often, the gaps that inevitably exist in a requirements document can easily be filled in if you know your audience's needs. You don't need to know your audience's business and/or needs inside and out, but a good understanding will help you fill in the gaps that will come.

Even if the requirements are well defined, there is always a chance of misinterpretation on the developer's end. Knowing your intended audience steers your clear of misinterpretation and into a faster development cycle. You have less chance of the end user coming back with bugs that are of the "it doesn't work like it should" nature because you've taken the time to learn your audience and the story that is to be told. You have a firm grasp on what the goal is and can deliver that much more effectively.

Understanding The Audience Will Help You Tell The Story

This seems pretty obvious, but sometimes we need to state the obvious to get the point across. Every application tells a story of some sort. The story it tells is not always a generalized story meant for everyone. Most applications are meant for a specific audience. If you can make these applications more engaging, help touch an emotion, then you've got the makings of a great application. In Lovemarks, it is said that "emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions". Understanding your audience and making that emotional connection will help lead to the application's intended goal, be it a sale, a process, or what have you. That essential understanding of what the audience wants and, furthermore, what the audience needs is essential to the telling of the application's story.

If we can't understand and know our audience, then we cannot, with any sense or accuracy, compel them to experience a story that has meaning to them. Knowing thy audience is more than just a catch phrase, it's a axiom to live by when designing and developing applications. Without a knowledge and understanding of your audience's needs and goals, then your project is doomed for failure. However, if you successfully grasp these needs and reach your audience on an emotional level, you can spur them to action and make your project a success!

Comments

It is vitally important to make sure everyone on the team (Product Owner, Developer, UX Designer, QA) agree on who the target is. It has to be more specific that saying "the user" or even "the consumer". Substitute the generic term for your application's target such as "the employee" or "the student" and you will run into the same problem.

The problem is that if you don't know anything about who you are designing software for, you are very likely going to create software that either is geared toward use by the developers or product owners themselves or is based on some union of all traits of any possible user.

You can end up with a piece of software that meets the needs of the super-human user that doesn't exist.

I have seen this countless time when doing usability tests where something that seemed so obvious to the team was completely foreign to the Person we were testing. In hindsight it is easy to see the error of your ways but too many applications get developed and shipped with inadequate or non-existing usability testing. The result is, Mike Smith (the cost accountant who spends less than 2 hours a week on the computer at home) with completely foreign concept/feature to figure out on his own.

I got more long winded regarding this topic on my blog back in January (http://agileui.blogspot.com/2008/01/who-is-user.html)

Rob McKeown
11/25/08 2:27 PM