While this approach is generally correct, it often (in practice) leaves out accounting for the User’s physical conditions, not just their audience demographic. Strangely enough, hardware often accounts for this almost by default, perhaps because it too, is in the physical world and a mismatch between hardware design and environmental suitability is quickly and easily identified. For example an unprotected tablet would not logically have much longevity being deployed as a safety sheet reference device around industrial oil service workers. A worker would also identify its unsuitability quickly as well. It’s also likely this unsuitability would be rapidly identified too, because the tablet would fit into and be reviewed under Product Design principles as opposed to Digital Design ones. This is the gap into which well-intended deliverables sometimes slide.
Like the fragile tablet example, digital interfaces suffer from this unsuitability too, although in a more subtle manner. For example, a customized tablet’s software interface for safety bulletins or instructions may be very well designed to deliver and display applicable audience data on a tablet quickly and concisely, but has it accounted for navigation being accomplished with heavy gloves or poor visibility? Does the content load quickly because the UX and UI team has accounted for remote-location latency or source proximity? Does using it align with still being appropriately aware around hazardous equipment? Does the interface operate in a battery-saving manner? If the answer is no, then that newly deployed digital initiative may likely fail or at the very least, be bypassed for simpler and likely more “analog” means whenever possible until it’s updated. It’s important to remember that at the end of the day and the latest electronics aside, the User’s job or task just needs to get done, and all facets of the applicable design should aim to help achieve that.
The “what” and “why” of Audience types is something commonly taken into account and even the digital-location facet of “where,” but frequently the immediate “where” and the conditions surrounding it are forgotten. I encourage anyone working in the digital world to step out from behind their screen and experience the environment they are designing for. Let end-users test and break prototypes and watch them do it. If that’s not possible directly (which is unfortunately frequently the case), then by all means do what you can to gather that contextual information however you can. After all, your digital creation is supposed to support and help, not encumber and inhibit.
Get as wide a spectrum of hands-on multi-industry experience as possible to distill the best and refine your strategy and approach to servicing your clients. Having visited, worked at, and deployed a wide spectrum of solutions and deliverables over the years at client sites, I have found nothing beats the context of being there when possible.
