Audience Research

Part 1: Discover

Synopsis: The conversations on social media can really tell a rich story about your brand, topic, cause, target audiences, or other area of interest. It is important to develop effective listening techniques in order to make decisions and justify activities based on these stories. As the first in my series on best practices for listening and engagement, this posts discusses tactics for discovery, the processes of defining content and sources for your listening activities.

I recently attended an inspiring, energetic event called UXCamp DC 2010 (#uxcampdc) with Jared Spool and a number of others who are completely passionate about the topic. Forum One was a sponsor, and several of my colleagues from our user experience and design team lead sessions on topics ranging from tips on quick and simple audience analysis to learn

This week, an organization asked me about our approach to usability testing. I proceeded to prattle on about how we like to keep it simple: lose the two-way mirror, constrain the scope of what's tested, test with small numbers of users, re-test often, blah, blah, blah.