Knowledge of Your Audience (HI Guide)

Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines / Part 1 - Fundamentals: Chapter 1 - Human Interface Principles / Additional Issues to Consider

Knowledge of Your Audience

Identifying and understanding your target audience are among the most important first steps when you start designing your product. To create a product that people can and will use, study the people who make up your target audience.

It's useful to create scenarios that describe a typical day in the life of a person you think uses the type of product you're designing. Think about the different
work spaces, tools, and constraints and limitations that people deal with. You can also visit actual work places and study how people do their jobs.

Analyze the steps necessary to complete each task you anticipate people wanting to accomplish. Then design your product to facilitate those tasks, using a step-by-step approach by thinking of how a person might get from one place to the next in a logical fashion.

Involve users throughout the design process and observe them working in their environment. Use people who fit your audience description to test your prototypes and development products. Listen to their feedback and try to address their needs in your product. Develop your product with people and their capabilities, not computers and their capabilities, in mind. For more information, see the section "Involving Users in the Design Process" in Chapter 3, "Human Interface Design and the Development Process," beginning on page 39.