Audience Awareness

    The most important part of any technical document is audience awareness. The "who" am I speaking to. For you acronym lovers out there, there is an acronym I like to think off when I am thinking of who my audience might be. AUDIENCE, Analyze, Understand, Demographics, Interest, Environment, Needs, Customize, and Expectations. Let's go in order, analyze what does that mean to us? This portion of the AUDIENCE is focus on the who of the audience, who might I be talking to. Next, understand, at this step we need to know the knowledge of our who. Are they an expert at this topic? Do they know anything about what I am talking about? This step ensures that we the writer do not go beyond their knowledge but also don't undershoot there knowledge. Next up, demographics, what is the demographic of our audience? What is their age, gender, education, position? These items matter when making documents for our audience. Are they too young to know the reference? Are they too old? Now we have interest, the interest portion of this acronym is focused on the audience's interests. Will they be interested in what we are writing, do they have any type of investment to the message? Next we have environment, environment is one of the most important steps while using this acronym. With this you want to think broadly, what is your relationship to the audience? Do you work for them? Do you work over them? What might be their attitude to? What about their cultural beliefs? All of these items are some of the most critical portions to note when attempting to create documents for an audience. Needs are the next step of analyzing your audience. Needs, is basically what information does your audience need to take proper action. An example would be, do they need to know how to milk a cow to fully understand what you are writing, if you are writing technical documentation for a new milking device? Next we have customize, this step evolves adjusting any part of your message to your "who." Think of it like a fact check, and also to check yourself. Finally, we have expectations, what expectations does the "who" have when reading your documentation. 

    After briefly going over how to understand your audience, and preparing yourself to write technical documents, you should have a baseline on how to understand your audience better. Remember that all technical documents should be centered around your audience!