How Can I Make Things For Specific People?

Before I can show you the specific interactions and how they integrate to form an experience, you must know who I’ve been designing for. As I have stated before, this project is for the members of the CD community at CIA. Even though we are a small community, there are clear, discernible differences in our work and personal habits that affect who and what we interact with, how we interact, and why we interact. This chapter will give you a quick look at the members of this community.

Can I Please Have The Audience's Attention?

This project is broken down into three audiences, each of which benefits from this project in a different way, but add to the overall success of the project too.

Primary Audience
The primary audience of this project is comprised of those who are current members of the CD community. This includes current students and faculty. They will be the ones who benefit most directly from this project. For the primary audience, I am able to further differentiate between four user profiles by picking out key characteristics and habits. These user profiles will follow the rest of the descriptions of the secondary and tertiary audiences. The primary audience will actively take part in this project by being those who experience it first hand. They are the ones who will be part of the culture change.

Secondary Audience
The secondary audience of this project includes all who are interested in joining the community, or otherwise have recently left the community. This audience includes potential students including high school graduates, freshman applying to CD,
transfer students, potential faculty, and alumni of the department. This audience will be what keeps the community from fizzling out. New members must join the community and want to be a part of what it stands for.

Tertiary Audience
The tertiary audience of this project includes all other outsiders who may be observing the community from near or afar. This includes the rest of the CIA community, potential employers, parents, etc. Their role in this project is to have a positive reaction to any observations they make about the CD community.

User Profiles

Now that we have established the three audiences of this project, I would like to share you the specific user profiles of those who I am directly designing for—the primary audience. For each of the following four profiles, I have compiled a short table of data and a description accompanied with a code name. This allows me to keep the users personal and effective to my goals, as well as provide a short and to the point synopsis of who these users are.

These user profiles are the results of surveys, interviews, and observations. I had to generalize to create these four user profiles, as the sample group for them is less than 30 people. Even though some may feel they don’t fit 100% into one category, I feel that these four profiles are more than adequate for categorizing all of those who are members of the Communication Design Department.

Primary User

"I Don't Communicate"
The primary user for my project is a person that does not communicate well or often with any members of the community. They tend to be very introverted, and work in their own space (not in the studio). They choose not to utilize the studio space or the experiences, interactions and knowledge gained while in the space. In class they are under-spoken, and see interacting with others as an optional, and many times useless activity. When questions arise, they choose to keep it to themselves and struggle with the burden of ignorance instead of reaching out for help.

Secondary User

"I'm Unavailable"
The secondary user is the type of person that has a lot of extracurricular activities going on in their outside life and cannot utilize the community and its facilities to its fullest extent. These users realize the opportunity to communicate and learn in class time. They participate actively in class, but not outside of class due to other obligations or lack of interest. When confronted, these people act pleasantly and actively, but they will not go out of their way to actively be a part of the community. Email is a very important asset for communication for this user.

Tertiary User

"See You Next Monday"
User three is the type of person that commits only when it is convenient, or otherwise helpful to them. This user is mostly active during class time, and is seldom to moderately seen in the studio outside of class time. They are mostly pleasant to have a conversation with and will ask questions if needed, but these tendencies show no sort of pattern or frequency. When these users are actively involved in the community it is great for all its members, but unfortunately that is not all the time.

Quarternary User

"Can I Help You"
User four is the ideal user for this community. They are the users whom actively participate and organize in the community, and utilize the studio space to its fullest extent. They are often limited in interactions not by their own faults, but by the members of the community they are interacting with. These users are the ones who lead critiques, strike up conversations, and are ambitious about their work, as well as their neighbors’ work. Not afraid to ask questions, these users are very open with the community and see the value in every aspect of their education/instruction.

Next time on Andrew's Senior Thesis, Chapter Four: The First One To Break It Wins.