[ubuntu-art] Who is our target audience?

[Thorsten Wilms]

On Sun, 2007-12-23 at 22:58 -0600, xl cheese wrote:
> That is the question we need to ask.  Do we want to target noobs to 
> linux or the vets of linux?   Maybe I'm wrong, but new linux and 
> novice computer users are typically enticed with eye candy.  It's 
> the veteran linux users that like things functional and plain.  

I don't think those are the right categories. Don't forget that Ubuntu
strives for more market share. The term noob is a sign of the wrong
mindset.

Inexperienced users would be hurt the most by a 'bold' design.


Having a clearly defined target audience would be of advantage. But I
have to say that during my industrial design studies, this part was
mostly guesswork. We defined a number of users and thought about their
needs and wants. That's better than having no structured base at all.
For an operating system environment, the target audience can be very
diverse. Even if we got to know (as opposed to just assume) that one
important fraction of the audience is mothers between 40 and 50, who
mainly browse the web, use email and do a little office work ...
what exactly would that tell us about the style to go for, the means of
communication to express what we want to say?


Still, how could we define our target audience?

Gender: Female, male, everything in between or outside ;)
I'm not at all sure how and to what extent the female tastes and needs
in visual communication differ from the male. I only know that
colour-deficient vision is much more common in men.

Nationality/Region: The world is the market, but it would be great if we
could get a grip on some cultural differences, as the whole software
world is ... western-centric. What can we express with colours that will
not be understood differently in some part of the world? Mainly for
icons: What artifacts and metaphors can be used for the largest part of
the world?

Age
Education
Occupation
Interests and Hobbies

A quick stab at a list:
- Home user
- Enthusiast user
- Developer
- Office worker
- Student

... probably more and each one would have to be fleshed out.

We could build personas
http://www.cooper.com/insights/journal_of_design/articles/perfecting_your_personas_1.html
But to not just guess, some research is needed. I tend to think
Canonical should do that, not an outside group.


Closely related to the target audience is the environment:
- Private and/or professional use of Ubuntu?
- Room and furniture.
- Organisation (hierarchy, department, team, family ...)


We could tackle "what do we want to say?" with only a vague idea of the
audience. I don't think it would be all that bad for the results.

Part of the "what to say" is rather technical:
- What can be done with a widget (try to always use the same 'words' for
the same kind of action)?
- Which window has focus?
- What's disabled?
- Where can you drag a window?
- What is the scope of some controls or how are they grouped?

An example: Title bar and menu bar of windows shouldn't be unified as
long as you can't drag the window on the free space of the menu bar.
Because you don't say one thing and do another.


Merry Christmas or just happy holidays :)

Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/