Post - research into a potential target audience - primary

To go with the audience profiles you have found from secondary sources (Pearl and Dean or magazine publishers), you need to gather for yourself some feedback from other people about the strengths of the products you have been researching.

1. Put on your screen images of cover / contents / double page spread or the YouTube video of a film opening.
2. Devise some questions that will encourage people to tell you what is appealing to the target audience about this product. Avoid closed questions like "Would you buy this?" or questions that don't give you feedback that can feed into your designs / plans, such as "Who do you think is the audience for this?" Instead devise questions that ask about which elements of the product would appeal. Make sure these questions cover the full range of technical elements.
3. Decide how you want people to comment: PhotoBooth on an imac, an open Word document for them to type their responses, post-it notes...
4. Collect responses. If you get chance, check your feedback after a few people: redesign the questions if you are not getting what you need.
5. Read through / watch their responses. Look for repeated comments: what do people agree about? What did they say that you anticipated? What did they say that surprised you?
6. Now record what you have learnt from this feedback and, crucially, what it has taught you about the design of your own product.