Lesson 7	Analyzing your audience
Objective	Describe techniques to gather information about your potential audience.

Analyzing Audience | Gather Potential Information

Analyzing your Audience in the Discovery and Definition Phase

In addition to specific documents such as the RFP and Site Planner, there are a number of methods you can use to gather data regarding sign and metaphor needs.

Audience analysis

Before designing signs and metaphors, you must know who your audiences are because different kinds of audiences may respond in various ways to the same signs and metaphors. Remember that your audience is the client as well as the many end users: investors, customers, suppliers, and so on.
Either your team or your client should conduct some form of audience analysis in the Discovery and Definition phases.
You may continue with further audience analysis as part of the Design phase to aid in the creation of appropriate signs and metaphors.

There are many methods for gathering data about an audience, including:

Interviews
Focus groups
Surveys
Third party market research

The SlideShow below will explain the features of these four methods of investigating your audience.

Interviews: The creative team can participate in interviews of client representatives, key customers, target audience members, and subject matter experts.
Focus groups are discussion groups that focus on a specific topic. Focus groups are valuable supplements to interviews because in a group, people build on each other's ideas.
Surveys are paper-based or online information-gathering tools. They can incorporate a wide range of question types.
Market Research: There are many consulting firms that perform market analysis focused on audience

Types Audience Analysis

In the next lesson, questions for analyzing audiences that have been developed by the market research industry will be discussed.
Click the link to support your learning of these four tools for audience analysis.
Audience Analysis Tools