1. Understanding audience, purpose, and context
Dr. Lam
TECM 4180

2. Let’s try this
Write an to your professor telling them you will miss class on 6/8 and 6/10. (first time ever missing a class)
Write an to your group member telling them you will miss the next team meeting.
Write an to your professor telling them you will miss the next class period. (you’ve missed 4 already this semester)

3. Purpose, audience, and context
Purpose of this communication? Is there more than one purpose?
Who is the audience? What is their attitude?
Context? When and where will the person read it?

4. What do we mean by Audience and purpose?
Open pbs.org in one tab of a browser.
Open pbskids.org in another tab in the browser.
What differences do you notice?
Who is the audience of each site? What is the purpose of the site?
Let’s try another one…

5. The Process of Audience analysis
Audience analysis is simply a series of 3 steps:
Asking the right questions – Page 62 in Anderson and template on “Resources” page
Researching and answering those questions
Applying your answers to your communication

6. Audience – the more Details, the better
Knowing that your primary audience is male or female is helpful. But, knowing that they are males from with little/no background in programming is even better.
So, what are some things we can be looking for in defining an audience?
Demographic and Professional characteristics
Cultural characteristics
Audience attitudes and preferences
Define your audience as specifically as you possibly can.

7. Where do we find out more about our audience?
Advantages
Disadvantages
Primary data
Interview them
Survey them
Observe them
Best representation of reality
Wide sample
Cost $$
Time
Secondary data
Existing research
User forums
Social Media
OK representation of reality
Easily accessible
Free
- Time
Personal experience
Put yourself in the situation
Use the product or software yourself
Easy to do
Not very time consuming
- Least accurate representation of reality

8. It’s all about 1 to 1 connections