Chapter 9: Audiences

Key factors when writing a presentation: language, multimedia, examples, length and interactive.

• Language used: No use of abusive language, as it can easily offend people. Use of technical terms for an experienced audience.
• Length of presentation: Long presentations work if they're interesting and engage the audience. The young audience gets bored quickly and becomes restless.
• Examples used: When using examples to illustrate ideas, remember to be understandable (e.g. don't refer to meat products if the audience is vegetarian).
• Interactive presentation: Asking questions to try things is a good strategy, but not everyone wants to take part.
• Multimedia used: Complicated descriptions are explained with charts, videos, sound and animations. Overuse of multimedia hides the message.

Characteristics of target audience: Age range, income levels, interests, disabilities or impairments.

• Age range: Young children need animations, bright colours, a large font size and sound. Old users are interested in actual content with a simple, attractive scheme.
• Income: It is essential to carefully consider the target audience's income level.
• Interests: We need to know the interests of our target audience. It should reflect their preferences.
• Disabilities: If the website is used by the visually impaired, then we require large font size, contrasting colours, concise language and sound.
• Needs of audience: Young children, adults, older children, older people.
• Young children: Bright cheerful colours, animation/sounds, more pictures than text, large font, simple words, include games, easy-to-use interface.
• Adults and older children: Attractive display, interesting content, balance of text and images, appropriate language, bullet points to read content easily.
• Older people: Contrasting colours, large font size, easy-to-use interface, less technical language, display consistent from page to page.

• Software is protected by copyright laws. Software piracy is the illegal copying of software.
• When software is installed, the user needs to type in the product key (a unique string of letters and numbers) that is supplied with the original copy of the software.
• If a hard copy is supplied, a sticker with a hologram indicating a genuine copy is packaged with the original software. Some software only runs if a dongle is plugged into a USB port.