Audiences are static
You need to study your audience only once.
Background
Hart (Ten Technical Communication Myths) states this as “once you’ve characterized your audience through audience analysis, the job’s done and all you need to do is follow up with a round of usability testing.” He then dubunks it by describing how audiences demonstrate a natural cycle of starting off as neophytes and eventually develop into power users. He also describes how technical audiences mature by using the example of how (in 2000) software manuals were able to assume the reader knows how to use Microsoft Windows when that was not the case a few years earlier.
Survival tips
Keep tabs on your audience. Times change. Customers change. Your help content must change to keep up.
Mentions
References
None, so far.
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