Matthew Hodgson warns against the folly of inadequate needs analysis. He speaks of the hardship experienced by many evangelists and users of Web 2.0 tools - I know where he is coming from there - and against knee-jerk reactions to adding a blog or wiki just because everyone else is doing it in a corporate environment. If you are a decision maker in a large organisation, and you don’t have a solid business reason to put a public or even intranet-only information sharing system in place, chances are you shouldn’t be doing it.

To find out if there is a solid business case, you need to write some kind of plan.

Do you need to undertake an audience needs analysis?

The simple answer is this: Yes! You need to be able to defend your position - whether it be within your own organisation, or at Senate Estimates, or to your web-publishing peers in industry - and you can either be reactive (wait until you’re asked and then think about it) or proactive (undertake an audience needs analysis as soon as possible for an existing project, or as early as possible in a new project). Guess which way is more efficient?

How do you undertake an audience needs analysis?

There are many ways of undertaking an audience needs analysis - the simplest is to find some representative audience members (AKA “users”, although this term is becoming less fashionable in the last couple of years) and talk to them. Funds and time allowing, you can also go the whole hog and engage a market research firm (one such that I am happy to recommend is Inside Story).

Some points to consider:

• Please accept that you may not know the full depth of your potential audience until you’ve launched your project. That said, you will easily find some audience members, and they will be able to refer you to others.
• There is no one right way to perform audience needs analysis - some ways are more efficient than others.
• If you are honest and transparent in what you offer audience interviewees they will be more forthcoming. Say what you have in mind, and accept all comments.
• Analyse comments for “doability” and congruence with project and organisational policy aims.
• Be honest with your own feelings throughout the process - it is normal to feel defensive when someone is attacking a concept that you have an emotional investment in, and understand that acceptance of any idea has no correlation to its worth (that said, acceptance makes the process easier).
• Record audience member comments and suggestions - follow up on specific requests for further information where you have undertaken to provide them, and keep in mind that everyone likes validation of their ideas by seeing them recorded and referenced.

Once you understand who you are putting the project together for, you can work out how best to undertake it - there are often small ways to include the needs of a diverse range of audiences such that all feel included in the process. More on that in a later posting.