User/s

Demographics and market

Who are the user/s?

The user/s are those individuals and communities who will ultimately be subject to design decisions. The requirements below are used by research + DESIGN to help development teams keep a user-centric approach in mind.

  1. Primary user/s:
    A primary user engages with design decisions intentionally and regularly, and is the prime focus for the design team.
  2. Secondary user/s:
    A secondary user may subconsciously interact with design decisions, or be exposed to them by other users.
  3. Demographics:
    Users are characterised by age, gender, language, relationship, offspring, education, profession, income, and nationality.
  4. Ideal-stereotypes:
    By means of the above demographics, ideal-stereotypes are created to help teams collectively visualise the end user/s.
  5. Empathic considerations:
    Understanding how these ideal-stereotypes have personal aspirations and daily obstacles helps to unpack design options.
  6. Technical competence:
    A user's technical competency requires benchmarking and testing to ascertain what concerns are warranted or overestimated.
  7. High-level keywords:
    Understanding what high-level keywords clients use to link their organisation's values to users, helps to establish the target market.
  8. Primary target market:
    The primary target market is a broad grouping of users who are known to the client, and are expected to engage with design decisions.
  9. Secondary target market:
    The secondary target market is unknown to the client, and may unknowingly or eventually interact with the design.
  10. Competitor SWOT:
    Each competitor is unpacked using their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT).
  11. Market position:
    Plotting relative market position allows for market focus, key innovation, and potential risk to be strategised.
  12. Use-cases:
    Use-cases outline a user-centred narrative, from purchasing, configuring, using, maintaining, and disposing of a design.