Know your audience – whoever they are
Posted on December 15, 2007
Category Best Practices, User Interface | 2 Comments
Know your audience. It’s amazing how much it all comes down to this.
I had an interesting discussion the other day about User Interface design. We were talking about the importance of UI design in today’s market, and how easy it can be to be seduced by a visually appealing interface, only to find that the interface is largely unusable.
This led to a discussion about the importance of weighing the tradeoffs between ease of use, interface complexity (which is not the same as how ‘pretty it is’) and user knowledge. Perhaps because this was a couple of ‘geeks talking’, the discussion came around to the Apollo Guidance Computers, which by today’s standards were laughable.
The interface was just about as simple as it could get; 19 pushbutton keys, including numbers, the + and – symbols and 7 ‘programming keys’ complete the input. The output consisted of 12 status lights. With 32K of main memory and running at just over 1 Mhz, the NASA Apollo Guidance computers had the computational ability of a 20 year old pocket calculator – or less.
And yet with computers like these the astronauts were able to guide themselves across the 380,000 km gulf between the earth and the moon and then use them to perform the moon landings.
How could they do this?
They did it because the astronauts were highly trained individuals who had studied the interface, the computer and the task they were to use the computers for. And they’d studied it for years. They didn’t rely on a fancy ‘easy to use’ interface to interpret the computers output for them. They did the work in their head – as they were standing in front of the device. NASA knew who would be using the computers and designed the interface to match.
But because most of us aren’t designing single use computer interfaces for astronauts we can’t rely on having such dedicated users. We’re in the business of creating usable systems for average people doing everyday tasks. Our goal must be to ensure that our users can interact with these systems in an efficient manner.
So when you’re designing an interface, either for a website, intranet site, program or even a book, please keep your audience in mind.
Remember to:
- Make sure you know as much about them as possible.
- Make it easy for them to find the information you expect them to be looking for.
- In particular, if you know that a significant number of users are looking for a particular piece of information, put it upfront where they can see it, don’t hide it (even if it doesn’t interest you).
- Don’t crowd the screen with stuff that they don’t need to see.
- Don’t complicate the interface.
- If you must have adverts, make sure that your users can differentiate them from the content.
NASA targeted the interface to their users, you can do the same.
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[...] a lot of stuff on the web about knowing your audience. It’s pretty obvious really: understand who the people are who visit your site, the kind of [...]
I agree, it’s obvious, but it’s still surprising how often organisations don’t manage to do it, especially over the long term.
Often, as a website ages, it changes and becomes focused on the needs of the company (sell, sell, sell), rather than the needs of the users (where can I find that information?). Sometimes the audience simply changes over time, and the company doesn’t realise it. Suddenly the company finds that site visits are shorter, there are fewer of them and web logs show that people are looking for information – but can’t find it, and so they leave.
You have to design the communication (website, whatever) with your customers and their needs in mind, but also remember to keep up with them as their needs change. Remember to have a close look at the page now and then and ask – does this still meet the needs of my customers?
Good point about the advertisers. Usually a website has many diverse audiences and you have to be able to serve their (sometimes) conflicting needs well to be successful. If you’re advertising on a site, it can bring in a whole new level of complexity.