RE: Audience Evaluation

["Jean Richardson" <jean -at- bjrcom -dot- com>]

Scott --

A survey is a common way to attack this problem, but it is often the least
meaningful.  Unless you are very skilled at creating surveys and analyzing
the data you get back *and* you can be assured of a fairly high
participation rate (which is quite uncommon), other techniques might be more
helpful.

I don't know how or whether you currently relate to your user group, so I'm
going to make some guesses.  There is always the handy technique of sitting
with your technical support staff and listening in on their calls -- or
gathering demographic and even psychographic data with their assistance.
You could also attend user group meetings or conferences.

However, I'd strongly encourage you to adopt some customer partnering
techniques such as structured site visits, regular teleconferences with
users, and other forms of relationship building techniques.  User analysis
need not be as complex and involved as is described in Hackos and Redish's
"User and Task Analysis for Interface Design," but that is an excellent
reference.  I'd also recommend "Contextual Design" by Beyer and Holtzblatt
and "Human Factors for Technical Communicators" by Coe.

Ask yourself a few questions about the profile you want to create:

-- Will this be a "living" profile?  Will you continue to update it from
release to release?

-- How much detail do you need and why?  Several years ago Lotus put profile
posters together for one design team.  Based on their field research, they
created a few "typical" users--one for each audience type--named them, took
pictures of people to go with the names, and wrote scenarios for them.

-- How can you get other team members--for instance, coders, testers, and
marketers--involved in this.  There are some very good reasons for spreading
this effort beyond your own department.

A lot of things are coming to mind right now based on previous projects, and
this conversation would be easier to have over the phone.  Feel free to drop
me a line and we can talk for awhile.  I can point you to some other
resources when we talk.

-- Jean

> -----Original Message-----
> From: bounce-techwr-l-36865 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
> [mailto:bounce-techwr-l-36865 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com]On Behalf Of Parsons,
> Scott
> Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 1:37 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Audience Evaluation
>
>
>
> Hi,
> I want to create an audience profile but am not sure how to
> begin. I was
> thinking we should sent out a survey to some of our customers
> and request
> feedback on our work. With that information, I hope to
> improve the quality
> of my group's work. Does anyone have suggestions or surveys
> that you can
> forward me?
> Thank you,
> Scott
> scott -dot- parsons -at- ps -dot- net
>



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