Something I preach, but don’t practice well #302: audience analysis

I know better. I may not have an ID degree, but this is not a practice used only in the learning field. It’s something we spent more than enough time on in grad school. It’s the first principle of any type of design: “Know your audience.” I know it, and I understand its importance. Yet (and I’m ashamed to admit it), as an ID, probably less than five percent of what I do on any given project is spent conducting audience analysis. And, almost all of the information I do have about my learners is secondhand (at minimum). I don’t interact with the learner population very much. In fact, I usually only hear from students during ILT pilot courses. For e-Learning courses, I don’t see or hear from them at all, unless I happen to overhear talk in the break room or cafeteria, when they’re talking openly because they don’t know who I am or what I do.

So many of the courses I design are catch-alls—attempts to meet the needs of a large, diverse audience. I can’t possibly design for each job role, so I have a vague, fleeting idea of who my audience is and how day-to-day work is accomplished. Sadly, I’m pretty out of touch. I work with SMEs who, like almost all SMEs, can’t remember what it was like to be new and green.

I tend to get caught up in content—I love to understand how things work, I like details, and I like to organize information. If I give less than five percent to audience, I probably give at least fifty to content. Content is important, but I need to put my own likes asides and spend more time with my audience. I have to put into practice what I know (and what I spent so much time and effort on in grad school). I have access to real, live potential students. I just need to get up and go see them, talk to them, watch them. Convincing them to give me time may be a challenge—our human resources are so limited, it’s hard to get anyone’s time right now. So, I have to put other skills I learned to practice—persuasion.

I suppose I’m just another casualty to aDDIE (the analysis piece is easily skimmed over to the more creative, interesting endeavors). I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s guilty of inadequate (or even nonexistent) audience analysis. I accept that for my first five years in ID, I’ve been woefully, shamefully deficient in that arena. So, now to put intentions to practice—let the rubber hit the road. I’ll be sure to report on the journey.

Tool snobbery

I’ve been guilty of being a tool snob before. Thought bubbles: ‘You’re using Publisher? Yuck.’ ‘Framemaker... bleh.’ ‘InDesign is so much better than PageMaker.’ ‘PowerPoint—give me a break.’ Ok, I have continuing moments of tool snobbery. I know we’ll never all agree, so why do we get downright defensive about our favorite tools? The hunkered-down Quark fans are never going to move the InDesign, unless they have to (and they’ll grumble for months, before finally, quietly moving to the dark side and denying they thought Quark was better).

Does tool snobbery hurt our instructional design? It shouldn’t be about the tools we use. But how much does it affect what we do? In an ideal world, we would have access to all of the tools, and we could use right tool for the right project every time—and we would know which tool is best for the situation and know how to use it. In the real world, we don’t have budgets for that. We generally make the best of what we have, and when extra money is found we whip out our wish lists and cross our fingers.

What are the dangers of making do? We stick with the same tool all the time because it’s familiar, we know it, and we don’t want to or have time to learn a new one. We can also waste a lot of time trying to get a tool to do something it really wasn’t meant to do.

How can we avoid this, especially when we don’t have much choice in the tools that are available to us? I try to keep my focus on the design and not the tools, but it’s hard—I love tools. They’re neat, and I love to play. And, I may think the best design requires complex branching and pretty high-fidelity graphics, but we don’t have the tools or the time for that.

It’s a constant juggling act—what would be the best design for the learner + what we have the time and/or capability to create + what I’d like to try as a designer + what the sponsor wants + what will work in the learner’s environment. The tool is a piece of the act, but it isn’t the whole show. If PowerPoint will work, then use PowerPoint. If an interactive PDF will work, then use it. I don’t think I’ll ever lose my tool snobbery, but I need to put it aside at times. I need to find a convenient place to put it though.