When publishing blog or Road Test report, do you know your audience ?

The problem is the vast majority of "unboxing" content is not necessary. Unless something is packed extrodinarly good or exceptionally bad, you do not need to see how a thing was put into a box!

But, because so many people record this step as part of their review process, they feel the need to include it.

Most of the time, it is unnecessary. Which has the unfortunate result that I (and I suspect others) skip it.

I would be careful to lump Project posts and Road Tests into the same type of content with the same intended audience.

In a Road Test, I actually want all of the mundane details about how the testing went. (I could, however, do without how the thing is packaged or what color the shipping label was.) Because I'm interested in seeing from the reviewer's perspective why they did what they did and seeing the results, as context to why they are saying what they said.

However, I think Road Test is a special case, and as such, it should be treated as so.

Now, when it comes to Projects, I want to be careful to differentiate between in-progress updates and a final presentation. Because in-progress updates are just that: here is everything that is going on. I'm sure that I, like some people, use it as a form of a notebook. The nice thing about this kind of media is that you, as a reader, can choose to follow along or not.

That said, as a final "here is my project," I totally agree. Think from the perspective of: "if I was reading about this project, what would I need to know about?" and NOT, here is every detailed decision that I painstakingly made. (by the way, if you note the progress of the project as a separate media type, then you don't need to do this!)

Can't please them all. Some like stories and background, motivation and history. Others, mostly the managerial types, only care about the bottom line - they just want an executive summary with the bottom-line up-front.

You'll just have to imagine which audience you want to read your review and write accordingly. I like to imagine that I'm writing for a technical audience that is savvy enough to skip the parts they don't care about, and facilitate that with proper chapter headings/subheadings. I imagine that they care about the methodology, as that influences the result, as well as the results themselves. I imagine they also would want that with a side of opinion and interpretation. I don't write targeting a general "high-school" audience as some newspapers would, as I feel that to be too restrictive, even though it may improve accessibility. There are plenty of spaces where marketing PR material is spewed out verbatim - that has been minced and shaped for general consumption and I (personally) feel we don't need any more of that.

If concerned, perhaps stratify your review for an overview up-front (an executive summary) and detailed blog-post click-throughs for those who want more meat.

But yes, the process is perhaps not all that interesting - but it can also depend on how you present it. Some of the best talks out there talk about the process from the perspective of reflecting on their learnings and making it humourous. It's probably no fun to go through each iteration procedurally without having a "point" to convey about why you even mentioned it.

I suppose in the case you were talking about - perhaps you should have known more about your audience before you assembled it, had the chance to practice it with your superiors for their input prior to the event and kept some of the detail in reserve slides to answer questions from the audience if they were actually interested. Presentations and videos may be similar - you're there to convey information, but you have to be engaging and entertaining for it to work. This is part of why I usually don't do video. Written reviews, however, may be more relaxed in their requirements.

- Gough

I agree DW. Like coaching recreational hockey in town. Kid's age range from 6 to 12. Some are like newborn fawns just learning to walk others are motoring like momma. Got to have something in the program that appeals to all of them, just not at the same time:)

I like unboxing videos where the unboxing process is just an animated backdrop that allows the reviewer to talk about interesting stuff like historical tidbits or anecdotal experience, or the significance of the product, etc. Cardboard boxes and Styrofoam are not interesting and neither is describing how cardboard unfolds, but what the reviewer is saying can still be very interesting. Doing a bunch of talking while presenting a static image of the product is not usually the most effective use of multimedia.

The e14 membership is quite diverse, so gearing a blog to interest everyone is a tall order. If you get into detailed design at a guru level most members will get nothing out of it, if they even read it. If you provide a detailed step-by-step explanation at an entry level, the experts will be totally bored. A decent strategy is to dive into the gee-wiz flashy features pretty quickly and if someone is interested they can keep reading into a more and more detailed description further down. You still want to wrap it all up with a meaningful conclusion because many people will read that first to see if it is worth going back to read the details. Basically try to structure the blog so that each person can get what they want from it without wading through stuff they aren't interested in.

 robogary  Fantastic question.  I have been taught the primary question is "What is the purpose of your report / blog / video / etc?"  The second question is "Who is your audience?"  I believe that these two questions are intertwined.  With Roadtests, we give our sales pitch in the application and the sponsor gets an opportunity to decide if our approach meets their intent (purpose / method / level of detail).

If I'm selected, I run with the game plan.  I know that my audience, the e14 community, has really smart and talented people... and that they won't shred me for what I produce.  Skill levels range from just starting out to orders of magnitude beyond my understanding.  So I do what is within my ability to do and I write about it.  I try to be somewhat entertaining and share what I learned along the way - so someone else (similar to me) can learn from my challenges.

As to your boss, .  Most engineers that I know WANT to know the process, pitfalls, challenges and solutions.  The method is as important as the outcome.  The details don't have the same value to the manager as they do the engineer because the manager has different accountabilities.  Again, what was the purpose of the presentation?  If not objective was shared, that's on your boss.

Fair enough. I can see how some of that might be useful in specific circumstances.

I suppose I'm thinking of some road tests where 50% of it is photos of the box in various states of being opened - giving very much a "this is what I did" rather than "this is what you need to know" vibe.

... and on the question in the title:

For the content of a road test review: I write what I would like to read, as an interested party. I've always pleased at least one person. Can't please a crowd.

What I do for the readers, is: try to make the report and the related blogs beautiful and structured. I always try to give them a pleasing appearance. 

For the sponsor, I try to give a fair and balanced view that gives them useful input.

I'm giving your boss a D for 

- giving the instructions after the fact

- not reviewing a presentation for a wide audience outside the team