AUDIENCE ANALYSIS WORKSHOP
PAGE 6: AUDIENCE READING CONDITIONS
Where will your audience encounter the document? Consider the ideal and all the possible real conditions.
Where will your audience encounter the document? Consider the ideal and all the possible real conditions.
What time of day might you audience be reading the document? What is ideal and what are the extreme possibilities? (e.g. if the document explains how to change a tire, might someone be reading it at night, on a lonely, muddy road, in the rain, with only a penlight?)
What weather conditions might your audience encounter when reading the document? Will it need to be laminated to protect it from frequent use or wet conditions?
What light conditions might your audience encounter when reading the document?
How will your audience meet your document? Will it be posted on a wall, behind a door, on a billboard by the highway, held in their hands, come in the mail, be distributed in the office in-box, be handed out to any passer-by, be purchased?
What will be the circumstances of reading? Will the document sit on a desk next to a computer (and thus need to lie open flat?), be read while sitting in a comfortable lounge chair, be read while standing in a public place? What will be the time constraints for reading?
Under what emotional conditions will your audience meet your document? Will it be required reading by someone in authority? Will it be something that the audience needs in a stressful situation (e.g. directions for administering CPR)? Will it be in a giddy situation when the reader might by distracted (e.g. putting together a bike on Christmas Eve when an adult party is also underway)?
Will your audience have more than one opportunity to read the document? Might the document come with an appliance so that the reader can read and re-read at leisure? Might the document be encountered only at the time of use? Would the reader read the document before needing the information?
Summarize what you know about your audiences' reading conditions that will influence your choices of format, register, and content.
Summarize what you know about your audiences' reading conditions that will influence your choices of format, register, and content.
Rodgers' Writing Tips by tips.rhettime.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Copyright Ida L. Rodgers, 2004
Updated January 16, 2012
Updated January 16, 2012
