Design for your audience

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Don’t create a template to win a design award. Don’t create a design that designers like; create a design that your audience likes.

Take into consideration:

Who’s your audience?

Where and under what conditions does your audience read the information?

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Examples of requirements resulting from the audience

Elderly people need a larger font size and larger line spacing than young people.

Engineers prefer a more frugal design than consumers.

Unskilled workers need bolder hints than university graduates.

Examples of requirements resulting from where and how the audience reads the information

Users who read in a loud production hall need a larger font size and more line space than users who are sitting in a quiet office.

Users who read while sitting in a moving car, bus, train, plane, ship, or other vehicle need a larger font size and more line space than users on solid ground.

Users who read in sunlight need pages that don’t produce a glare.

Users who read in rooms where lighting conditions are poor need strong contrasts between paper and letters, and between different colors.

Users who have to carry a printed manual with them may need a document with a small page size that fits in their pockets or in a special compartment attached to the product. For example, the manual of a car should fit into the car’s glove compartment.

Users who view an electronic document on a mobile device need a layout that takes up little screen real estate.