Technical Writing – Analysing Your Audience

Technical writers sometimes get lost. They go off course because they forget that they aren’t writing for the company or the product they are building a manual for; they are working for the people who will use that product. The first key step for getting your user documentation right is to get to know your audience.
Here are some insights into how to better understand your target group.
Research
If you’re unfamiliar with your key audience, there’s no need to panic. You just need to do some research, and thankfully there are many simple tools you can use to get the job done.
Surveys and Questionnaires – Which boils down to asking the question (or questions) in a structured way, the good news of course is that you’re a technical author, so coming up with a logical survey should be no problem.
Your Experience – Don’t forget you’re an end user too, if an instruction works for you it may well work for everyone. Over a period of time your own understanding of what’s good and what isn’t will inform every piece of writing you do.
Stereotypes – I’m not suggesting that you use these roles in a prejudicial manner, but the good news is that stereotypes generally exist thanks to their popularity, and you can harness that in a positive way to inform your writing.
Brainstorming – the easiest technique of all is to grab a group of users and throw them in a room to shout out ideas, it’s quick and painless and lots of fun.
Other Departments – marketing and sales are always a good place to start, followed by customer care. Why? Because these guys interact with your audience every single day and have probably already done a bit of research on their likes and dislikes or have accumulated an understanding through experience. If somebody else has already done the hard work it doesn’t hurt to benefit from their efforts does it?
What are you looking to get from the exercise?
You are looking to understand three simple concepts from your research;
What does your audience already know about your product?
What language is acceptable to them (and what isn’t – for example Jargon terms)?
What they will use your product for and what their expectations will be.
There really is no need to worry if you as a technical author find yourself in unfamiliar waters, and a little research can go a long way in creating the perfect user documentation.