Target Audience

Attached is the visual metaphor of our target audience profiled as different kinds of glasses. I made sure there was a wide overview of their personalities and experience styles, so it's clear what each of them will respond to and what their individual pain-points are.

I've now also written up a short creative piece on each of the audience segments, bringing them to life a little more and making them seem realistic. I'm sure there's probably aspects of each of them that we can relate to.

Mark is checking his phone. He doesn’t actually have any new messages or notifications, but it means he doesn’t have to make eye-contact with anyone else in the Library. To be honest, he’s usually the first to start a conversation, he’s an outgoing kind of guy, but there’s just something about the big dusty library that puts him out of his comfort zone. This is unfamiliar territory, and Mark has wandered in only long enough to get the first-year book that his tutor told him he needs. As he meanders haphazardly through tall bookshelves, he wonders how anyone ever finds anything useful with such a vague numbering system. Google is so much faster and more intuitive. In fact Mark doesn’t even remember seeing a catalogue search computer, he just dived straight in when he saw an aisle marked ‘media studies’, but this waste of time is just frustrating. He’s pretty sure all these were written last century anyway, maybe he’ll just go get a coffee and download that pdf his mate Alex recommended.

The library has always been a useful place for Rachel. She’s a busy girl, always coordinating study groups and chasing her peers up while she juggles four assignments at once and a part-time job. The library is her oasis of calm, where she can go to relax efficiently, guilt-free. She knows her way around the scanners and computers, and can find the compulsory readings no worries, but won’t stick around trying to find extra books because it’s faster to browse with a search engine than scan through book spines. A confident computer aficionado, Rachel’s embarrassed to admit she still finds the gigantic printers a little intimidating, and hates how much it always costs to photocopy everything. And requesting books? She’s never bothered with that, she’s not sure how it works but who has days to wait for a big heavy book to arrive? It also annoys her that the meeting rooms always seem to be booked, but the library is still a good meeting place, as long as she can avoid those people that always tell her to be quiet.

Maria despises those people that come into the library and talk loudly about how Brad got with Stacey on the weekend, or what happened last night on Shortland Street. The library is supposed to be a place of higher education, and more importantly, of silence. Head down, Maria strides straight to the bookshelf she needs, she’s been here before, and doesn’t really need direction from the librarians but enjoys a quick with them chat now and then about how the renovation is going. Never without a decent set of highlighters, Maria can often be spotted perched on a desk reading through a pile of books, tearing strips of paper from her notebook to use as bookmarks. Maria secretly gets a little satisfaction from seeing other students photocopying stacks of material; she scans to email to save herself print costs, or just takes the books home. Well-acquainted with the Dewie Decimal System, Maria isn’t afraid to spend time to find the perfect resource, but once she has it isn’t 100% where to take it- are the coloured walls purely aesthetic, or do they signify reading and study zones?