Rob Michals and Aaron Isakson
The chapter starts by stressing the importance of the two purposes of technical presentations: “to concisely and accurately convey verifiable information and to persuade audiences to attend to this information.” (page. 112)
To achieve the 2 purposes of technical presentations, audience identification must be done. As audiences change, the information in the presentation much change to suit the needs of the intended audience. “You can accomplish this most easily by directing different audiences to particular sections of the proposal.” (page. 114)
The chapter breaks the audience down into specific roles: Initial audience, primary audience, secondary audience, and external audience. The initial audience receives the presentation document and directs the document to the primary audience. The primary audience consists of people who will actually use the presented data, they are the decision makers. The secondary audience receives the presentation documents; they are interested in the data since they are somehow affected by it. The external audience is outside of the organization but affected by the information.
The chapter then discussed the methods of analyzing your audience. The following characteristics help to identify the audiences needs and expectations: Context in which a document is interpreted and used, purpose and motivation of the audiences, prior knowledge of the audiences, including education and professional experiences, reading level of the audiences, and the organizational roles of the audiences. (page. 116) The chapter also discusses the method of asking questions within the business departments in order to gain a sense of what should be added to the presentation. These departments could include: Design, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service.
The physical and political context of a document is very important if you want the audience to read the information. The audience wants a nicely formatted document, meaning paragraph divisions, headings, page design, type and size of illustrations, and binding to make it more accessible. (page. 117) Also if the presenter wants the audience to see the document, he/she better make sure that the document is sent or posted in the correct location, making sure EVERYONE sees it, thus not leaving anybody out. (leaving people out can make them feel unimportant, thus they will more than likely ignore anymore documents written by the presenter).
The book breaks down a nice list for document organization: Initial abstracts or summaries, headings and subheadings, use of descending order so that the most important information comes first, definition of terms, transitions that show how sections of the document relate to each other, visuals that make information easily accessible, page layout that is not crowded or cluttered. (page. 119)
Each audience has purpose and motivation, knowing this can help with the organization of the presentation. The book breaks it down into 2 types: Receptive audiences (recommend changes and then support them later in the document) and Resistant audiences (show the problem and solutions in order to persuade the audience).
The prior knowledge of the audience will aid the presenter in adding the correct vocabulary and content. The audiences’ educational background will affect how they comprehend the concepts presented to them. Vocational schools focus on practical knowledge while Universities focus more on theory with a mix of practicality. What a person knows will directly affect how they read a document/presentation.
The reading ability of an audience will drastically affect the way a document is written. If the audience can’t understand the information, then nothing gets accomplished. Just because the subject matter is complex, doesn’t mean the presentation method has to be complex. There’s a great table on page 123 that describes the factors of reading. This table includes: content, context, purpose, audience, organization, visuals, design, usability, and language conventions.
The next section of the chapter discusses limited literacy of the audience. Limited literacy is broken up into two categories: People who are skillful readers in some circumstances but not in other circumstances and people who don’t get much information of any written documents. People with limited literacy often skip over most of the document or they choose not to read it. One solution the book suggests is to present in one-on-one conferences, face-to-face small meetings, training programs, dvd’s, and computer software. (page. 125)
The internal language is not always appropriate for an external audience. When writing an email to an external party, being more specific is always better than if you were writing to some other employee in your company. (page. 126)
Each group of people will have different comprehensibility levels. When writing to a group, you need to adjust to the audience you are trying to send the message to. This is done by changing the vocabulary, using topic sentences, and taking in account any prior knowledge on the subject. Each contribute to the level of expertise the author wants the reader to know about the subject. Page 127-8 has a great paragraph written three different ways, for three groups of people.
The last topic of chapter four addresses audiences with the same level of complexity, but worded different for better understanding. They gave an example of a company on page 130, using three different emails addressing the same issue but being sent to different people. Each person had a different roll in the company and would be affected by the changes. Taking the time to write different emails is not always possible, so the book suggests a few points to help make your point clear. First you should identify and write for the preliminary audience, then identify the second audiences, and lastly make it accessible in both email and paper form. (page 131-2)
12 comments:
When reading chapter four I tried to compare it to events in my life. Recently I have been helping my old High School art teacher with her classes, consisting of 7th and 8th graders, who are unfamiliar with art. It took me a few weeks to realize and change the way I was speaking to them. In the beginning I was speaking to them like they were college students understanding the lingo of the "art world". After seeing numerous blank looks with confused faces attached I had to alter my way of communication. I began to alter my ways of teching by adding more visuals and examples of what I was trying to explain to them.
Looking back, knowing about the basics in this chapter would have helped me prepare better for this experience. I should have used my prior knowledge that the kids are kids and don't know as much as I have learned. This chapter has been a friendly little reminder/hit in the head for me.
Just like Becca, I have experienced the same sort of information except it dealt with tennis. I used to work at a country club where we taught tennis lessons to little kids. At first I wasn’t getting through to them because I was assuming that they had more experience than I thought. I realized that all the drills were too advanced for them and had to look at my “audience” and change what I was doing for the next lesson.
There were many beneficial ways to think about in order to help into the organizational process for technical documents. Some of the ones that I thought were important to me were the physical and political context of the document. If something isn’t organized and doesn’t have headings or paragraph divisions I’m not going to read it. The document would look scattered and not easily readable. Also, as stated before in my tennis experience, the prior knowledge of the audience is important to how they are going to learn.
Somewhat of a piggy-back on what Becca and Katie said, I thought about college professors when I was reading examples from this chapter. A vast majority of college professors have doctorate degrees for whatever their specialization is. When kids come in taking general classes during their freshman and sophomore years, those teachers may get blank looks while discussing what those professors feel is just elementary information to themselves. They have to adjust to their audience and find better ways of transfering the information to whatever type of audience that they are speaking to.
This is a big thing to consider especially in the workplace. When you try to get a message across to a coworker or someone, you could be saying one thing and they may not understand it as you want them to. That is just because maybe they learn or take information in a different form than you.
It is similar to what corey said, in that when in the classroom the professor can be doing problems on the board but some students need to do it themselves not just watch or listen to the professor doing it for them.
This chapter deals with the ways a person should address audiences. While analyzing audiences, a person should consider the context, purpose, prior knowledge, reading level and organizational role of the audiences. This chapter talks about ways to adress audiences with different levels of expertise and organizational roles.
After reading this chapter I found that there are many things to consider about a particular audience. I learned that people see and learn things differently. You must take everything into account including reading level and prior knowledge. As a presenter you must obtain 100% audience comprehension. So that everyone understands and can interpret what you are saying.
If you think about it anywhere you look from advertising to talking to your frinds, how the message comes accross is how it will either be understood, agreed to, or rejected. An example with this is the American society's big push to reduce underage smoking with a huge ad campaign aimed at certain audiences. These range from children to adults and the content is varied to catch the sought after target audience to acheive the goal of spreading the knowledege. A lot of thought and changes go into a process like that to ensure a target audience gets the point so to speak. How you communicate to your audience will determine the way the info that is represented is interpreted and absorbed if at all.
I learned a lot by reading about types of audiences. It would help me in my role in my position to think about my audience more, which I realized from reading this chapter. Having information on the type of audience, their level of knowledge and familiarity can help make or break a presentation. It is quite important to think about your presentation from the eye of the audience.
Knowing your audience is absolutely critical, knowing how detailed or informal you need to be can save you a lot of time and trouble. At work I have to tell the clients what format to send thier documents in whether it be a jpg, tif, or pdf. I have to know whether or not I am speaking to another designer or a business owner who might not know what a jpg, tif or pdf is. If I am speaking to a business owner I use as few details as possible to not confuse them in the process. If it is a designer I am able to include all of the details and why I need other material. This chapter was helpful in understanding all different types of audiences, not just the intended audience.
The two purposes relayed by the authors on technical presentations (accurate info conveyed and persuading audiences to attend to the information) are good general topics that should be considered. Adapting that to each audience and topic gets much more detailed...The chapter does expand on that and gives methods that can be used. Often a presenter is so concerned with the actual process of gathering the information and the act of presenting, keeping focus in regards to the audience can be tough.
To me, the key point was knowing your audience. Their backgrounds, educational level, literacy limitations, what their purpose is for the presentation, what they look to get out of it, etc. How and what you present is affected by who the presentation is given to and how much effort is given to its organization. Document organization is discussed in the chapter and how to relate it to each presentation. Personally this can mean the difference between a great and a poor presentation. Someone can have the most up-to-date and exact information needed, but if it is not organized much of its power is lost.
These are great comments. I can relate to the feeling of being in an audience and feeling like the information just isn't intended for you. It's like "pheewu" right over your head and doesn't get the intended purpose accomplished. I think that adjustments to accomodate your audiences purpose is important. Just as it's important to make sure the information is accurate, especially as the presenter. If you find something on the internet or Wikipedia and you present it as truth and it is false. If you do not give credible information than what happens to your credibility or to your integrity?
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