Re: User research

["Peter Swisher" <PeteS -at- BMGi -dot- com>]

This type of research will be extremely valuable to your documentation and
the organization as a whole.  As I write, the engineers for the product I am
working on are coding w/out any written descriptions of who the end users
are.  So, as part of my doc plan, I decided to do a more detailed "Audience"
analysis.

How to do an Audience analysis is thankfully buried in the PASS (Purpose,
Audience, Subject Self) analysis section of my Rhetoric 102 books!  However,
an Audience analysis is similar to a Use Case "Actor" analysis.  There are
plenty of good books on Use Case design out there.  For my project, I
started with a generic description of Use Case design from "Mastering the
Requirements Process" by Suzane and James Robertson.  There is probably a
copy on your PMM or PDMs shelf.

This book suggests to start by making a list of the roles that people might
have in connection to your system.  For each role, then consider:

What other jobs do they have?
What other life roles do they have?
What Subject Matter Expertise do they have?
What is their attitude towards their job?
What is their technical experience?
What is their attitude towards technology?
Do they normally use a computer? Yes, some people do not..
What are their intellectual achievements? (HS, BA, BS, MBA, etc.)
What is their age, gender, social class, nationality, natural language, etc?
Do they have disabilities?
What are their hobbies?

Combined with asking these questions, I am "reverse engineering" some
marketing bullet points.  For example, I want to understand how
"Collaboration" actually translates into the buttons a user role will click
w/in a system.

I hope this gets you started!

- Pete



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