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Your Audience is Much More Diverse than you Think
If you’ve been reading some of these posts for a while, you’re already pretty clear about the fact that our audiences are always much more diverse than we think. As an example, most people may be comfortable with eye contact, as it helps them assimilate the information being shared. But as I mentioned in my previous post, others like myself will have a much harder time assimilating information when too much eye contact is involved, as it causes them to become uncomfortable, distracted, or lose focus. Other people simply don’t feel the need to look at you to understand what you’re telling them!
Point is that we’re all different and recognizing that fact is the first step on the path to becoming a more inclusive professional communicator. Different, not only because of skin colour, culture, gender, upbringing, creed, nationality, beliefs, the type of music we like to listen to, or the food we like best. Different because of how our brain works, and how we assimilate information.
In the world of visual or interactive design, there’s a common agreement that designers should never forget that “they are not their users”. What that means is that, as designers, they should never lose focus of the fact that not everybody thinks like them, acts like them, or understands things the way that they do. Therefore, what might seem obvious…
