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Docs for Developers pp 1–21Cite as

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Understanding your audience

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Abstract

Effective documentation requires you to have empathy for your users, which you can build with user research and its tools: interviews, developer surveys, and reviewing support issues. This chapter describes how to conduct research and condense your research into user personas, user stories, and user journey maps that you can refer to later. Empathize with your users by trying out your own software and documenting your experience in a friction log. Notice the places in your product where you can help your users through documentation or through product improvements.

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  • DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4842-7217-6_1
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Figure 1-1

Notes

  1. 1.

    Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, Martin Weber, “The Curse of Knowledge in Economic Settings: An Experimental Analysis,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 97 no. 5.

  2. 2.

    Elizabeth Louise Newton Ph.D., “The Rocky Road From Actions to Intentions,” Stanford University, 1990, 33–46.

  3. 3.

    Maria Rosala, “Ethical maturity in user research,” Nielsen Norman Group, published December 29, 2019, www.nngroup.com/articles/user-research-ethics/.

  4. 4.

    Jakob Nielsen, “Why you only need to test with 5 users,” Nielsen Norman Group, published March 18, 2000, www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-with-5-users/.

  5. 5.

    Jakob Nielsen, “Keep online surveys short,” Nielsen Norman Group, published February 1, 2004, www.nngroup.com/articles/keep-online-surveys-short/.

  6. 6.

    Gerry Gaffney and Caroline Jarrett, Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability (Oxford: Morgan Kaufmann, 2008), 11–29.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Berkeley, CA, USA

    Jared Bhatti

  2. Victoria, BC, Canada

    Zachary Sarah Corleissen

  3. Cornwall, UK

    Jen Lambourne

  4. San Francisco, CA, USA

    David Nunez

  5. Mounds View, MN, USA

    Heidi Waterhouse

Authors
  1. Jared Bhatti
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  2. Zachary Sarah Corleissen
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  3. Jen Lambourne
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  4. David Nunez
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  5. Heidi Waterhouse
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© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

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Bhatti, J., Corleissen, Z.S., Lambourne, J., Nunez, D., Waterhouse, H. (2021). Understanding your audience. In: Docs for Developers. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7217-6_1

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