Audience, Market, Product

In a podcast-interview I did with Tom Johnson, I mentioned this framework as a way to evaluate technical documentation requirements. The components of audience, market, and product aren’t anything new, nor is considering them in documentation planning. What’s been missing, however, is an effective way to understand them in a way that informs documentation.

This framework is my latest iteration on how to apply the 12 cognitive dimensions of API usability to technical documentation. These dimensions, by themselves, are very difficult to apply for various reasons, but I think the notion of identifying the components and elements of an interaction can be useful—but the method must be usable. So, I’ve taken a step back from the level of detail the 12 dimensions to these three.

In this framework, it’s essential to consider, not just the documentation, but the entire customer experience in which the documentation will reside to correctly assess the requirements. I’m still thinking out loud because I think that there’s some value in lingering on the question(s) before diving into the solution process.

So to review the framework’s components…

Audience

These are the people who will (or who you expect to) read the content. Content includes anything you write for someone else to read. The boundaries of this depend on a lot of local variables, but should include all the content of the entire customer experience. Your audience might be segmented into groups such as  business/purchase decision makers, direct users, indirect users, support, development. You should know how they all interact with the entire customer experience.

Market

For this analysis, the market is the space in which your company or product is acquired. It could be an open-source product that offers a service or benefit similar to others. It could be downloaded from an app store. It could be something sold door-to-door. How your product appears in the space it shares with other similar products influences your content priorities. The more you know about the relationship between your product, its competitors, and its customers, the better you can assess those influences.

Product

Finally, there’s the product itself. How does it work? What does it do? How is it designed? What are its key features and benefits to the customer? What are its challenges? Knowing how the product’s features interact with the customer (i.e. audience) has a significant influence on the documentation.

And so…

And so, that’s where it begins. I’m still formulating the questions, and I think the questions are the key to bringing this down from a theoretical notion to something that can be applied by practitioners.

It all starts with knowledge (as opposed to assumption and conjecture) and that usually comes from research. With regard to research, I found these articles to be interesting:

Next, I’ll look at the questions that are specific to each component.

User research to the rescue!

A-Team-Logo As Hannibal of the A-Team would say, “I love it when a plan comes together!

I responded to this post in Quora from someone asking for advice on how to improve their website. There was lots of good, 1st-person, advice when I read it, so I suggested that they go to their target demographic ask them what they thought.

Have you tried usability testing it with some people from your target market? E.g. go to a local university with this [home page image] on a tablet, or even just a photo on a clipboard, and ask people a few questions:

a) What does this page inspire you to do? Tell me more about that. (after each question)
b) Where would you click?
c) What would you expect to find after you clicked?
d) Would you sign up for this? Why/why not?
e) What does “verified” mean to you?
f) Thank you! here’s a gift card for a coffee.

If you started after breakfast, I would imagine you’d have a much better sense of what you need to improve by lunch time.

(Read Quote of Bob Watson’s answer to What things can I improve on this home page? on Quora)

Later,  I read this comment to the post.

Bob, I  actually did usability testing today as you advised and got some real feedback from students. It really helped in understanding what would resonate with students.

I also want to do A/B testing to see which messaging converts better. Do you happen to know any resource (website)?

Thanks a lot for your feedback

Happy to help!

These are your users

Getting back to this year’s theme, I see this video pop up from time to time in Twitter feeds and the like.

It’s been linked from this article about the Facebook log in and it reminded me of a recent phone call I had with my mother. It reflects the language barrier we encounter whenever she tries to describe a computer problem she’s having.

While we’re both college educated and speak English as our native languages, that’s of little consolation during these long-distance tech-support calls. In the past, rebooting the computer usually fixed the problem, and masked the underlying language barrier. Recently, however, she got some new network hardware, which was giving her trouble. In no time, it turned into an Abbot and Costello routine as we tried to identify the devices like cable modem, DSL modem, router, etc.

Fortunately, she got it figured out with help from my sister, but it reminded me of how we are not our target users.

Not by a long shot!