Finding the target audience for the target group is probably the most difficult thing to find. After reading from Woodtke and Tognazzini I believe I understand what they are saying.
Don’t design for yourself, design towards the target audience/end user.
I could sit here all day and look at phone websites from other countries and say the navigation is at the top, they’ve used different colours. However it wouldn’t do me any good if I don’t know who the target audience is. Since those sites I did review for this project also had a target audience in mind and it might not be the same person I am aiming for.
I don’t believe I’m quite there in figuring out the target audience. On the GlobalCom brief we were given:
European Market. Multilingual.
Travel considerably through Europe.
Have dis verse cultural interest and passionate sports fanatics.
European tourist visiting through the summer months.
The main problem with this audience is it’s too broad. I would have to narrow this down quite a bit to create a successful product.
I started by looking at people in Europe who would travel. Everything from a retired couple to holiday makers and gap year travellers. I found that retired couples wouldn’t really need a phone on their holiday. Retirees would be more on a budget and probably wouldn’t worry about communicating with the family as much. So I decided they were out. Holiday makers were an idea but I also felt this was too board. Gap year travellers were an idea but they could have a limited income.
I decided to focus the website on University graduates who are working and travelling within Europe. There is a trend in Europe right now to work aboard so graduates can earn money and experience over seas. As I discovered from the website euro graduate:
This would fit into the multilingual and travel considerably throughout europe part of the target audience. Also according to the article on euro graduate they were earning a considerable income. Not as much as they would like to be earning but it was quite a bit compared to a student.
http://www.eurograduate.com/mag.asp (pages 9-16)
By elimination I had found the age group of my target audience.
Ages: 25 – 27
This narrowed down my search quite a bit. However I was still a little confused about the audience demographic. I then had a look at magazines from different countries. I made sure they would be from the target demographics age group. A few that showed up were vogue, the observer, and volt. All were UK based magazines. I decided to have a look at vogue and the observer since they were related to each other. This lead me to concentrate more on females for my interface rather than males.
I brought a few issues of vogue from different countries. From Spain, France and the UK. I compared the magazines to each other. I also had a look at the readership profiles from different countries. Links to these profiles are found below:
Vogue:
From the publisher Conte naste.
From the Australian Publisher
I found from the Australian vogue the average of readers is about 25 – 58. I’m assuming the same could be said for the rest of the world. Although the publication readership profile has said the average age world wide is 37 I would assume that there would different readers from other age groups like in Australia. I would also assume the demographic would have an expendable income as well. However for the sake of my sanity and this project I will ignore the income bracket. I believe most people will be looking for a phone, maybe the best phone they could buy regardless of cost.
I also found that demographic could be reading the guardian newspaper as well as how from the link below.
Newspaper:
http://adinfo-guardian.co.uk/the-guardian/gua-reader-profile.shtml
From the advertisments I would then have a look at the websites to get a fair idea of what the target group were buying. Some common advertisments found in all vogue magazines:
Louis Vuitton
Dior
Gucci
I believe these would be the major sponors and contributator of vogue magazine. I noticed that all companies are European based.
I had a look at the websites of these companies. Also the international site to see if there was any difference between navigation/colour/sound:
Louis Vuitton
Dior
http://www.diorcouture.com/dior3.html
Gucci
http://www.gucci.com/uk/index2.html
Interesting the sites are all flashed based. Each site is well designed and uses that companies colour. I got a sense of sophisication from these sites. Just by looking at these sites I knew the items were expensive but also well made, fashionable and would make me feel good. These are the sites I should be looking at while designing for Global Com.
To conclude my audience is:
Age: 25 -27
Sex: Female (concentrating more on females than males)
- University Graduates
- Working aboard and well travelled
- Currently employed in professional positions
- Followers of fashion
- Up to date with the lastest technology
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