Understanding your UX target audience

As a skilled designer, you might have created the most intuitive navigation paths, the most user-friendly features, and the most well-structured interface — however, a truly exceptional user experience is only attained when these elements are thoughtfully tailored to resonate with your target audience.

The notion of a ‘target audience’ transcends demographics, and rather involves a nuanced understanding of the psychographic, behavioural, and contextual factors that influence user preferences and decision-making processes. The term ‘target audience’ can be defined as the specific group of individuals or customers who are seeking solutions that align with the offerings of your product or service. Users are more likely to engage and interact with a product that is most suited to them and the exact experience they’re seeking, and by leveraging a diverse array of research techniques, designers can craft a clear picture of their target audience. In this article, we’ll walk you through the methodologies that can be applied to gathering data that defines your target audience.

User research methods

It is widely acknowledged that the best way to get to know someone is by asking questions. For this reason, conducting in-depth user interviews provides the perfect platform for obtaining rich, nuanced insights in the form of elaborate verbal responses which serve as robust and reliable data to inform a comprehensive understanding of the target audience. In-depth interviews build a rapport between the participant and moderator, creating an environment of trust and leading the participant to be more open and authentic regarding what they’re looking for in a user experience. Truly understanding a UX target audience necessitates the holistic understanding of users, and in-depth interviews present the opportunity to uncover users’ environments, routines, as well as social dynamics.

Furthermore, in-depth interviews allow for the exploration of the emotional dimensions involved in user interactions that ultimately shape the interactions that users have with a digital product. This strong qualitative user research method allows researchers to unpack in detail what users do, why they do it, their attitudes, behaviours and further context which are all invaluable data points that inform the decision-making process in design.

User personas

A user persona is a fictional representation of a distinct user group within a target audience. User personas might include the following information about a user group:

• Demographic information (e.g., age, gender, and professional background)
• Psychographic information
• Behavioural attributes
• Typical tasks and interactions
• Challenges and pain points
• Goals and motivations
• Preferences and expectations

Let’s dive a little bit deeper into why user personas serve as invaluable tools in understanding a target audience. User personas are tools that enable designers, researchers and other stakeholders to empathise with a target audience. User personas aren’t a research method, but rather a tool for centralising data collected from user research methods such as in-depth interviews to exist as living documents that can be used to make informed decisions about features that align with users’ preferences and expectations. User personas function to transform any abstract data and demographic information to create vivid, relatable characters that have distinctive personalities.

Personas are key in understanding the target audience as they contribute an element of empathy to design decisions. For example, rather than referring to hundreds of pages of interview transcripts or lengthy research report results when trying to validate a design decision, snappy one-page personas not only simplify this aspect of the decision-making process, but also humanise the data. Taking a look at 3 one-page user personas eases the process of considering the impact of complex design decisions on multiple user segments. An added benefit of user personas is that they facilitate effective cross-functional communication and collaboration, serving as the shared language that enables teams to align their efforts towards meeting the needs of specific audience groups.

User journey mapping

Our understanding of audience needs and preferences can also be improved through user journey mapping. User journey maps are visual representations of the steps a user takes to achieve a certain goal or complete a task while using a digital product or service, spanning touch-points, interactions, emotions, and pain points. Ideally, the creation of a user-centric user journey map will be collaborative, involving a range of stakeholders to provide diverse perspectives. The process includes 4 key stages:

1. Gathering a set of qualitative and quantitative data from user research methods, including in-depth interviews, surveys, analytics and usability testing
2. Creating a map that functions as a visual representation of the entire user journey, incorporating touch-points, pain points, areas of frustration and confusion as well as the user’s feelings and attitudes at each stage of the journey
3. Analysing the map to identify patterns, themes, key insights and areas that call for improvement
4. Iteratively refining the user journey map over time depending on whether there are new insights or further feedback to aid in the optimisation of the user experience

User journey maps used alongside other user research outputs such as personas provide the perfect opportunity to tailor the user experience for multiple UX target audiences for different stages of the user journey.

Read the full article at: https://makeitclear.com/understanding-your-ux-target-audience/