Developing Tools For Specific Audiences

Software February 25, 2008

Our fundamental goal in creating software or web applications is to provide a useful tool for people that allows them to do something. Word lets us make documents, iTunes lets us organize and listen to music, Photoshop allows us to make images, etc.

Not only do these applications improve upon old-word, non-technological practices (such as no longer cutting and pasting images together to make a collage or having to redo an entire document page upon finding a mistake), but they also create new behaviors that we wouldn't have been able to do before.

I'd like to separate out the different types of tools that exist, however, into a few different groups. Clearly we have the tools that exist for the everyday user, but we also have advanced tools for people already passionate and skilled in a specific area and furthermore, we have tools to help make other tools.

Look at the difference between MS Paint and Adobe Photoshop. Of course the latter has much more extensive functionality, however you have to understand the program to be able to use it to its full potential. It doesn't "help you out" at all - it just gives you the power.

Look at any of Apple's iLife applications, meant to empower the everyday user to design great things. In this set of tools, we provide templates and guides that make the users feel as though they are good at design without actually knowing anything.

Additionally, the tools that help create tools exist to speed up the development process and provide help in areas that may otherwise require more time and people. Dreamweaver, for example, though it can be used in strictly development mode, allows for a design view for people who don't understand HTML that well. Even though I dislike the design tab, some may argue it's a useful tool. Other development tools like Eclipse or Coda provide useful features to developers. These, of course, are strictly meant for people who know what they're doing - not who are just playing around like with iWeb or iPhoto.

So, in our continual development of software/web "tools" we should really consider our target audiences and classify them in these various "shells."



Shell 1: CORE a small group of core users who have a specific skill set, passion and set of needs to be satisfied. This might be perhaps a handful of lighting developers at Pixar who need a special software to work between several customized applications and accomplish specific tasks. Example: Pixar's Renderman.

Shell 2: COMMITTED a larger group of users who share a standard set of needs but less specific. This would be a group of developers in a specific language, maybe. It's not important what their task is - just that they all are committed to something specific, doing fairly similar things and have specific skill sets. Example: Adobe Photoshop or Dreamweaver.

Shell 3: CONGREGATION a broader audience with a specific interest, such as artists vs. business people vs. developers vs. writers. Instead of focusing on very specific functionality, your software has to understand a general need that a group of people could use in a variety of ways. Example: Microsoft Excel or Powerpoint.

Shell 4: CROWD everyone else - tools that could be useful to any average person. Example: Apple iTunes or Mail.

This is not to say that if your target audience falls into a broad shell that you can't allow for specific functionality within your application. Just don't make it the primary focus if the majority of your audience is using your application for general purposes.

So decide in your development stage what kind of "tool" you're making. This fundamental decision affects your interaction design, UI design, marketing, etc.

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