User Analysis

Before you begin drafting the instructions, you need to consider who your audience is so that you can take their needs into account. Although you can't "know" your audience in any essential sense—your audience isn't a monolithic or homogenous thing, but rather a dynamic and widely varying group of people—you can make best guesses about them that will help you to create documents more useful to them. The following questions will help you to go about making these "best guesses":

• In the broadest possible terms, who is reading your document? What can you usefully say about the demographics of your audience? What brings your audience to your document?
• What attitudes or preconceptions does your audience hold about the product? What about the company making it? What are they expecting the product to do? Can the product realistically meet these expectations?
• In what context will your audience likely use the product? Can you imagine the scenario that led the user to purchase the product?
• What does your audience already know about the product and its use? Where did they get this knowledge? Do they hold any misconceptions that need to be addressed? What can you safely assume the user knows and doesn't know?
• From the onset, what is your audience expecting to get from your instructions?

In asking these questions, you should get a good sense of not just the audience you are writing for, but of the overall rhetorical work that your document needs to accomplish.