After reading the materials about audience, it seems really useful to consider the level of knowledge your reader will have. Sometimes your audience will already have a strong understanding of the terms and ideas involved in your message, allowing you to write with more technical language and achieve depth and complexity more quickly than you would if your reader is assumed to be less knowledgeable. If your audience is going to largely consist of non-specialists, then you may need to offer more explanations and include more general information as background before expanding upon details.
I thought it was valuable advice that, when writing for a variable audience with different degrees of knowledge, you can use headings and lists as signposts to help readers navigate to the information that will be most relevant to them. A lot of the writing I’ve done in an academic context has discouraged the use of headings. Because don’t have much experience with using headings to identify how a work was compartmentalized into smaller categories, it’s something I would like to practice.
The basic categories of audience types outlined in these articles seems helpful and simple enough to keep in mind while writing. In the future, I think I am likely to apply the tip in the Pressbooks article about adjusting the level of your information, by “pitch[ing]” it lower or higher to match the level of technical knowledge of your audience members. But the part of the discussion I found to be most useful are the guidelines for how to define and analyze your audience type by considering dimensions such as their background (experience, training), needs and interests, goals, demographic characteristics, and communication preferences. Considering how these kinds of factors influence your reader and the way that they process their world and decode messages will motivate you to flex your writing style to be more impactful and useful to them.
In the conversations I’ve witnessed as a student of Electronic Media Technology, audience analysis is strongly encouraged and emphasized as an essential step for developing a project proposal. The goal of audience analysis in this context is often characterized by summarizing and communicating you understanding of the problem that needs solving. Ultimately, clearly reflecting back a concise description of the reader’s “problem” is a way of introducing yourself as a credible source who is capable of managing that problem, and this summary should occur before expanding upon any details how you intend to carry out the solution. Here is an article that talks about the steps of developing a design proposal. The first step listed, “Talk to Your Prospective Client to Find Out What They Want”, reiterates the idea of audience analysis and the importance of understanding the audiences’ goals and needs.
From my understanding of the kinds of writing I will need to do in the realm of media design, a challenge pertaining to addressing audiences will be that many of my writing tasks involve educating potential clients or “executives” in the business who will not have the same interests or level of technical knowledge required of my work. Typical writing tasks that Professor Trimble noted in our interview are artists statements (which are typical written to address a general, public audience from highly variable backgrounds) or things such as grant applications, curatorial applications, or summaries for submission to a faculty review board (which are written to address administrators who maybe do not have specific knowledge of your craft but are highly knowledgeable in other fields).
Thanks for reading!
Sources
Carter, Molly. “Why Audience Analysis Is Essential in Technical Writing.” Writingassist.con, Writing Assistance, Inc., 9 June 2021, https://www.writingassist.com/resources/articles-3/why-audience-analysis-is-essential-in-technical-writing/.
DeSilva, Michele, et al. “Audience Analysis.” Online Technical Writing by David McMurrey, Pressbooks, https://coccoer.pressbooks.com/chapter/audience-analysis/.
Schenker, Marc. “How to Write a Design Proposal: The Ultimate Guide .” Brush Up by Creative Market, Creative Market, 31 Mar. 2021, https://creativemarket.com/blog/how-to-write-design-proposal.