I’ve learned from personal experience that audience analysis is very important in any type of communication, especially technical writing. While working as a web designer for a local internet service provider I was tasked with writing a document that explained to our users how to install anti-virus software on their PC’s. I had explained the steps to several customers before, both in person when they brought their machines in, and over the phone when I helped with technical support. Because of this background experience with our users, I knew the parts that were difficult or foreign to them, and I focused my document on clearly describing these areas. After a few months of that section of the website going live we received phone calls thanking us for help with their anti-virus software. When you know your audience or readers well, you can both write to their level of understanding, and tailor your content to help them the most.
It’s also very important to know the types of readers who could possibly read your document. Just today I read an article I found on digg.com about Apple Inc suing the online technology magazine gizmodo.com because one of their writers posted an article describing how to use Apple’s Mac operating system on x86 Intel based machines— something forbidden by the software’s EULA. The writer for gizmodo.com didn’t anticipate Apple’s legal department, a tertiary reader, to read his tutorial. It’s very possible the writer could lose his job at Gizmodo over the situation.
I also found the facts about how different cultures interpret symbols, ideas, and business differently very interesting. I had never before considered that different cultures place emphasis on things in business differently than we do. Asians tending to value contextual clues over content could make the difference between making a business sale if the seller gave a wrong impression or bad context.
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Your personal experience shows how much hands on experience can aid you aid profiling your readers. While you could use Google to profile your readers like the book suggests, I would think that it would be be much harder to do so because of all the information that you would get back but also because of the fact that not everything on the Internet is factual. While you could read people's reactions to something you can't read things like their facial expressions or body language that sometimes tells you more than their words do. So while it might be a useful starting point it is nothing compared to actually trying to help people face to face.
Andy
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You’ve written little that I can disagree with. Furthermore you did well in relating the required reading to real world examples and your own experience, which I believe is the intention of this assignment. I also work in IT and can relate to what said in regard to assisting customers in an appropriate manner. Here that would constitute the ability to explain and clarify what has happened or needs to happen in terms they, as end-users, can understand. This can prove difficult, and equally frustrating, but it, as you know, is something we deal with in IT. By profiling the users against the criteria offered in the source text, we can prevent headaches while saving both time and money for both sides.
reading response week 1
You're correct in your discussion of audience analysis. It's particularly important in regards to transitioning from verbal communication to written communication. When speaking with someone in person or over the phone, such as you did when working as technical support, you have the advantage of ensuring that whomever you are speaking to understands the point(s) you are trying to convey. Being able to respond to questions as they come up is easier rather than anticipating those questions. Additionally, it is easier to pinpoint exactly what a constumer is not understanding when on the phone or in person, and to interact with each one on an indiviudal basis. Audience analysis is critical to be able to effectively communicate in written form.
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I like your example of Apple Inc. versus Gizmodo. I commonly run into the same type of articles and never really considered the same effects in a technical document I will write for a company. The tertiary is a difficult evaluator to balance. It is easy to be pessimistic and write defensively. However, that could lead to misinformation and affect your primary or secondary reader. What is more important? I feel the tertiary reader has potential for a larger scale result. But satisfying your primary reader is your first priority. Of course the answer to this is ultimately fulfilling everyone’s requirements but there are several places where the line can be drawn .
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The apple comment of the tertiary reader is pretty interesting. It is interesting because it sounds like people are liable when they write a technical document. I have even heard of emails being recorded in companies to watch the internal conversations of the employees. With all of this liability within documents, people have to consider who the readers before they write anything. In some cases not writing anything would be the best idea. Everything like documents, pictures, emails, and recorded conversations can make a person lose their job or sometimes even go to jail. Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary readers all must be considered.
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You bring up and interesting point when you say that employees can be held accountable for what they write in technical documents. But the question I have to ask is where does it stop? I thought of this while reading chapter three of Technical Communications Today when they showed the memo from Donald Rumsfeld. How can you pass along any meaningful information if you have to be concerned with everyone person that can read it? Should Donald Rumsfeld have sent a memo that just said “Hey, we need to talk.”? I think at some point you have to stop and say this is enough and rather than work harder on the writing, work harder on who you let read the writing.
I can fully relate to this
I can fully relate to this because I have had to write documents at a previous job, explaining to others workers how to do some of the daily tasks. I realized that because I had done the job for a long period of time and fully understood all of the language that I was using, that the other employees did not understand the terminology and that my notes to them that were intended to be helpful were not at all helpful because I had not thought about the audience I was writing to. It is also very important when writing that the writer does try not to intentionally offend any of its readers, but the fact of this situation is that even if a writer tries to avoid offending anyone, they likely still will.
Different cultures understand things differently and what is not offensive to one culture might be very offensive another.
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I really enjoyed reading your post. I too just read the same article on Digg recently. I entirely agree on how important it is to take into account all ends of the audience. However, it makes me wonder, could this writer have effectively written the same article and taken into account Apples legal department as one of its audiences. By doing this it would probably render his new article useless because he couldn't outline any of the procedures to install Mac OS on an x86 machine. This is where I lose sight a little on how we can truly take into all ends of the audience.
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Thank you for the examples. Personally I like the example you gave about the tertiary apple reader, its better than the books examples. You make a good point on be cautious about your readers. Not only being cautious when it comes to getting your point across, but also, like in the Gizmodo.com case, cautious about tertiary readers. It almost makes me scared, because I feel like i have posted worse information on the web, than that gizmo bloke. I will have to be aware of my readers more I guess.
Evan White