Skip to main content

Finding the Correct Target Audience

(West Chester Digital, 2018)

To start designing any product, it’s important to decide the target users or audience that will be using your creation. These ideal buyers are the base of your design thinking.

What is target Audience?

The Target audience are a group of consumers who are most likely to use or buy your product. These are the people who you aim to design for.

Why do we need target audience?

As a designer, understanding the target audience is vital. Potential users can give you insights into what they want in the product. Aiming at a defined audience will help you design with more clarity and will give importance to the people you are designing for, which will attract their attention into buying the product.

How to determine the target audience?

The Target audience can be ascertained by asking the questions like:

  • Who are you designing for? Or Who needs the product the most?
  • What will be the age bracket of the target audience?
  • Do you need to design for a particular gender?
  • What income group does the targeted audience fall into?
  • What problems are faced by the target audience?

Once we figure out the answers to the above questions, we get a clearer picture of what criteria we need to design for. Understanding your target users, allows you to build relationships and better communicate with them. 

The chosen target users for the projects are young adults from the age 18 to 40. This group of people are more likely to go out during the pandemic to run their personal errands or even help their younger or older family members with their needs. Choosing the right target audience plays a vital role as it enables the designer to direct its study and resources to the audience with high potential all to catch their interest in the design.

(Gamlen, 2021)

According to The Times of India, adults are reportedly the most common group spreading the contagious virus. This was concluded after a study carried out by a team of researchers from Imperial College London using cell phone data from more than 10 million individuals of the USA. The findings revealed that adults between 20 to 49 years have been the ones significantly responsible for the rising COVID cases.

Therefore, my aim is to target the most affected and possibly the most in need. I will be designing public furniture for waiting areas for young adults to protect them from the spread of viruses and bacteria as well as to keep them in social distancing. Hence, I need to empathise with them to understand their needs and behaviour to produce a worthy output. 

Let me know how do you choose your target audience in the comment section below. 
Thank you.

References:

·        Gamlen, P. 2001. Why We Feel Compelled to Say ‘Bless You’ When Someone Sneezes. [image] Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/well/mind/sneezing-sneezes-god-bless-you-manners-etiquette.html> [Accessed 9 June 2021],.

·         Marketingevolution.com. 2021. Steps to Find Your Target Audience | Marketing Evolution. [online] Available at: <https://www.marketingevolution.com/marketing-essentials/target-audience> [Accessed 9 June 2021].

·         Smashing Magazine. 2013. 50 Design Problems In 50 Days: Real Empathy For Innovation (Part 1) — Smashing Magazine. [online] Available at: <https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/05/50-problems-50-days-part-1-real-empathy-innovation/> [Accessed 9 June 2021].

·         The Times of India, 2021. Adults in the 20-49 years age group more likely to spread COVID: Study. [online] Available at: <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/coronavirus-spread-adults-in-the-20-49-years-age-group-more-likely-to-spread-covid-study/photostory/80725925.cms?picid=80725944> [Accessed 9 June 2021].

·         West Chester Digital, 2018. Defining Your Target Audience. [image] Available at: <https://www.westchesterdigital.com/2018/11/16/defining-your-target-audience/> [Accessed 10 June 2021].

Comments

  1. Ng Ee ShiungJune 10, 2021 at 2:24 AM

    Nice post! I see that you have selected your target users based on research data in accordance to your project topic. Do you believe you could refine your targets more specifically or do you prefer your target users to be broad so you can design for more users?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anushka PuniyaniJune 16, 2021 at 7:01 AM

      Hello Sean!!
      I feel that pandemic has affected a large population and the number of people going out with urgent works are also huge, keeping this in mind the bracket of my target audience a bit broad. As I will progress with my exploration sketches the target users might narrow down according to the fitting of the furniture in the specific surrounding.
      Thankyou for your feedback..

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Build - Prototyping Stage

Prototype improves the overall understanding of the design. A rapid prototype helps to illustrate the final product, allowing to comprehense the product's function and target audience. A slight shift in proportions can make a huge difference and completely change the look and function of a product. Every product has a target audience, and at the end of the day, the target audience is going to have the final say. Prototypes allow user testing, which improves designs with valuable feedback about the product. Below is my prototype which is built to understand the arrangement and stability of the design. I used cardboard and translucent pannels to build the prototype. Through rapid prototyping, I identified few issues with the design. The wood logs which are substituted with cardboard are not supported when they meet the polycarbonate partition. For the solution, metal joints can be attached to support and fix the logs with the partition. Thank you for reading my blog. Do share your fe...
Post a Comment
Read more

TEST- understand, observe, visualize and iterate.

  Testing, in Design Thinking, involves generating user feedback as related to the prototypes you have developed, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of your users.  Testing is the chance to get a product out into the world and test it in real-time. During this phase, you have a chance to see if you’ve framed the problem correctly.  Above is my recording and evaluation from the user testing. The user seems satisfied with the product and didn't have much to offer when it came to concluding drawbacks. Therefore I had to closely observe the user interaction to identify the points of improvement.  Thank you for reading my blog. Do share your views on the testing stage in the comment section below.
Post a Comment
Read more

Final Prototype - User Interaction

  Integrating prototyping into your product development process can be transformational. It can make a richer experience, and enable the user to empathize with the product.  The point of a prototype is to have a tangible visual representation of the solutions discussed throughout the design process. Instead of repeating the information discussed in the ideation phase - a prototype acts as a model that takes into consideration everything discussed.  Having this model allows me as a designer to validate my concepts by sharing the prototype with the users. After observing the user interaction with the mockup model, I made few modifications and then finally prototype was built. The materials used in the final model were polycarbonate sheets and a wooden bench. The polycarbonate was sourced from a small-scale roofing factory where the extra polycarbonate sheets which were wrongly cut or minorly defective were available at a very reasonable price. Whereas I searched for wooden ...
Post a Comment
Read more