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Member's Forum When publishing blog or Road Test report, do you know your audience ?
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When publishing blog or Road Test report, do you know your audience ?

robogary
robogary over 3 years ago

After doing a powerpoint presentation for a large online meeting to a global audience of mostly engineers and engineering leadership of various departments, my boss assembled me and my team into his office for a chat.

He asked to give ourselves a grade of our presentation. We gave ourselves As, Bs, maybe even a C thrown in. 

The boss said "I generously give you folks a D."

He continued that the presentation included far too much detail on how much time was spent troubleshooting, collecting data, and other related analysis issues and obstacles getting information.

He concluded our feedback session "reminding" us that the audience really didnt care how hard it was to get the needed data and how long it took, their interest was the results and any corrective action recommendations.

I think of this lesson when publishing a Project or Road Test report.

If a video is made to share a project, no one is really interested that it took 15 takes or 12 hours to edit the video (unless the article is about the video editor).

The audience probably doesnt care if you filled your hard drive taking hi-rez photos and had to get cloud server space.  

If publishing a schematic, it doesnt matter if there are 5 revisions or 50 revs from start to finish unless there is a key knowledge point to learn in one of those revs. If someone cares, they will ask.   

Its OK to share an anecdote the major milestones and challenges about the journey if it helps tell the story. 

What's your experience  ? 

   

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  • Fred27
    Fred27 over 3 years ago

    I definitely agree. You need to concentrate on what your audience cares about, not what you want to say.

    I'll give an example.A friend and I were doing a presentation to a few develops and testers about Docker and ho wit could be used for building and testing software. My very knowledgeable friend described how Linux has file system overlays, etc. When I took over I just said "it's like a virtual machine, but lightweight and only the bits you need". He was absolutely right but I realised that the people listening didn't care. The wanted the simpler (if less accurate) explanation.

    I feel the same applies to road tests. You need to work out what your audience wants to know - and they are likely to not all care about the same things or the same level or detail. Maybe they want to know "is this easy to use". Mabye they want to know if it fits their requirements.

    Anyway my point is - don't just document what you did, try to answer the questions you think people would be asking.

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  • Fred27
    Fred27 over 3 years ago

    I definitely agree. You need to concentrate on what your audience cares about, not what you want to say.

    I'll give an example.A friend and I were doing a presentation to a few develops and testers about Docker and ho wit could be used for building and testing software. My very knowledgeable friend described how Linux has file system overlays, etc. When I took over I just said "it's like a virtual machine, but lightweight and only the bits you need". He was absolutely right but I realised that the people listening didn't care. The wanted the simpler (if less accurate) explanation.

    I feel the same applies to road tests. You need to work out what your audience wants to know - and they are likely to not all care about the same things or the same level or detail. Maybe they want to know "is this easy to use". Mabye they want to know if it fits their requirements.

    Anyway my point is - don't just document what you did, try to answer the questions you think people would be asking.

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  • Fred27
    Fred27 over 3 years ago in reply to Fred27

    And in particular I find that unboxing videos fit firmly in this category. Whilst it might be exciting for the person making the video to open it up see what's in the box, I don't see how it's of any interest to the audience. Opening a cardboard box is the same whether there's some amazing piece of test equipment in there or just a bag of potatoes.

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