The audience of a technical report—or any piece of writing for that matter—is the intended or potential reader or readers. For most technical writers, audience is the most important consideration in planning, writing, and reviewing a document. You adapt your writing to meet the needs, interests, and background of the readers who will be reading your writing, listening to your presentation, or viewing your graphics.

The concept of audience analysis seems simple and obvious. It’s much the same as telling someone, “Talk so the person in front of you can understand what you’re saying,” or, “Don’t talk rocket science to your six-year-old.” But in fact, lack of audience analysis and adaptation is one of the main causes of most of the problems you find in professional, technical documents—particularly instructions where it surfaces most glaringly. Have you ever read instructions and not known what a technical term was, or what the next step should be? Those problems can be addressed with careful audience analysis.

Types of Audiences

One of the first things to do when you analyze an audience is to identify its type (or types—it’s rarely just one type). One way to classify audiences is as follows.

Experts

These are the people who know the theory and/or the product inside and out. They designed it, they tested it, they know everything about it. Often, they have advanced degrees and operate in academic settings or in research and development areas of technology or government. If your communication is intended for experts, you can use technical jargon—the language of the trade. Experts who create technical communications themselves, though, have to consciously consider their use of technical jargon. It’s fine if they are writing for other experts, but it may or may not be fine if they’re writing for audiences with lower levels of expertise.

Technicians

Technicians are the people who build, operate, maintain, and repair the things that the experts design and theorize about. Technicians have a highly developed level of knowledge of a field, but of a more practical nature.

Executives

Executives are the people who make business, economic, administrative, legal, governmental, and/or political decisions about the things that the experts and technicians work with. If it’s a new product, they decide whether to produce and market it. If it’s a new power technology, they decide whether the city should implement it.  Although executives have decision-making power, they often have as little technical knowledge about the subject as non-specialists.

Non-specialists

Non-specialists have the least technical knowledge of all, and are unlikely to understand information at the expert level, using technical language and advanced concepts. Their interest may be as practical as the technicians’ interest, but in a different way. They want to use the new product to accomplish their tasks; they want to understand the new power technology just enough to know whether to vote for or against it in the upcoming bond election. Or, they may just be curious about a specific technical matter and want to learn about it out of interest, and most likely not for any specific, practical reason.

Audience Analysis

It’s important to determine the potential types of readers in your audience. You may be able to place them in one of the four categories—expert, technician, executive, or non-specialist—or you may not. Even if you can identify the category, that’s just the start of an audience analysis. You also need to analyze your potential audience in terms of characteristics such as the following.

Background – Knowledge, Experience, Training

One of your most important concerns is just how much knowledge, experience, or training you can expect in your audience. If you expect some of your readers to lack certain background, do you automatically supply it in your document? Consider an example: imagine you’re writing a guide to using a software product that runs under Microsoft Windows. How much can you expect your readers to know about Windows? If some are likely to know little about Windows, should you provide that information? If you say no, then you run the risk of customers getting frustrated with your product. If you say yes to adding background information on Windows, you increase your work effort and add to the page count of the document (and thus to the cost). Obviously, there’s no easy answer to this question—part of the answer may involve just how small a segment of the audience needs that background information.

Needs and Interests

To plan your document, you need to know what your audience is going to expect from that document. Imagine how readers will want to use your document and what will they demand from it. For example, if you’re writing a manual on how to use a new smart phone, what information, and in what format, will your readers expect? If you’re under contract to write a background report on global warming for a national real estate association, what would realtors want to read about and, equally important, what do they not want to read about in terms of global warming? Always posit your audience’s needs and interests to develop a fuller understanding of how to approach a technical document’s content and format.

Other Demographic Characteristics

Of course there are many other characteristics about your readers that might influence how you should design and create your technical communication, for example, age group, type of residence, area of residence, gender, political preferences, and so on.

Potential Complications with Audience Analysis

Audience analysis can get complicated by at least four other factors: multiple audiences for one document, wide variability within one audience, unknown audiences, and unintended audiences.

Multiple Audiences for One Document

It’s often the case that a technical communication needs to address more than one audience. For example, a report may be read by people in technical roles (experts and technicians) and people in administrative roles (executives). What do you do? One option is to write all of the sections so that all the audiences of your document can understand them, which often means that you’re writing for the lowest level of understanding, which in turn may bore experts and technicians. Or you can write at a more advanced level of understanding and include footnotes, an appendix, or some type of extra explanation for the less technical audience who needs that background.  Or, still another option, you can write each section strictly for the audience that would be interested in it, then use headings and section introductions to alert your audience about where to go and what to avoid in your report. In general, avoid using terminology that is too technical so you don’t unintentionally exclude portions of your audience. This can become increasingly difficult when writing for many audiences who need to access one document for different purposes.

Variability within One Main Audience

You may realize that, although you have an audience that fits into mostly one category, there is still wide variability in members’ backgrounds. This is a difficult situation. If you write to the lowest common denominator of reader, you’re likely to end up with too much explanation that some audience members will dismiss. But if you don’t write to that lowest level, you lose that segment of your readers. Options are similar to writing for multiple audiences. Some technical writers aim for the majority of readers and sacrifice that minority that needs more help. Others technical writers put supplemental or background information in appendices or footnotes, or reference additional resources for those readers with lower expertise.

Unknown Audiences

The usual solution when creating technical communications for an unknown audience is to assume that the audience has little to no background in the field. However, this does not mean that you can “talk down” to this audience. The difficult task when creating for an unknown audience is to relay information in a professional, respectful way. Think of an unknown audience as the general, adult reading population who might read The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Herald, or any well-respected newspaper.

Unintended Audiences

Experts, technicians, executives, and non-specialists are intended audiences, known groups of people to whom you’re communicating, the audience for which your document is intended. Unintended audiences may be anyone that comes across your communication at any point in time. In a professional setting, it’s important to be mindful of unintended audiences for emails, memos, reports, proposals, or any communication produced for internal or external audiences. In addition to being a good rule of thumb, it’s in your best interest legally to remain professional in every document you produce, as these documents may be used as evidence in court against either the author or the business from which they originated.

How to Analyze Audience

Ask and answer the following questions, using any type of format you wish (questions & answers, free mind mapping software, bulleted lists, or anything that works for you). Make sure to touch on the following points of analysis:

1. Who is your intended, primary audience? Identify as many audience characteristics as you can.
2. What is your primary audience’s knowledge level of the topic (expert, technician, executive, non-specialist) and supposed interest in the topic?
3. What is your primary audience’s role (supervisor, co-worker, general reader, etc.)?
4. How will your primary audience most likely use your information? What questions will they need answered through your communication?
5. Who is your secondary audience, if there is one?
6. What other unintended audiences might have access to this information?
7. What is the purpose/intended use of the communication?
8. How much information, and of what type, is appropriate for your primary and known secondary audiences?