Audience

When designing a project, learn who the audience will be and why they are using your product. Horton lists five categories of users: novice users, occasional users, transfer users, expert users, and rote users (94:28).

Several studies show that young people are as much as 10 times more likely to use computer-generated documents or multimedia projects than older people (Horton 94:29).

For each group of users it is important to determine the tasks that they will be performing with your project. In other words, what work will they perform? It is also necessary to determine the circumstances under which they perform the task, such as environmental conditions, work equipment, or other documents they may have available to them. For example, if novice users are learning to fill in job descriptions, they are most likely working in a training room with tutors and a reference manual available to them.

When considering who is the audience, ask what do they do with the product and what information they will require to do it.