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Subject:Users and what they want From:"Bonni J. Graham" <bgraham -at- ELECTRICITI -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 6 Jun 1994 13:58:45 PST
Barb asks what other writers do for audience analysis.
I don't know about anyone else, but I offer usability testing as one of my
services. It gives me a chance to test all kinds of things, and makes me
look like a full-service provider.
When I can't do that, I go to BOTH sales/marketing AND product support.
The sales people (if they're any good) know why people are buying the
software (or at least why the company wants them to buy it and how
successful that is). The product support people know what isn't working or
is hard to understand, because they're on the front lines. I also include
both of these departments in my routing, so they can see how well I
incorporated the information they gave me.
Hope that helps!
Bonni Graham
Manual Labour
Director, Region 8 Conference
bgraham -at- electriciti -dot- com