Mental Models of the Audience

JTM Breakout 3-2-09

Our topic was "Audiences: What mental models of our readers/viewers/v/users/PFKAA*" are appropriate for today?"

We began with a question: does it matter whether we think of our audience as "readers" or "viewers," when they might be interacting, choosing, making things on site and stories we create.

The idea behind this session was to consider whether imagining an audience of readers was appropriate, given the various degrees of interactivity and content of interactive sites like games, databases, calculators, etc, should journalists create a set of typical user profiles as interactive designers do.

We looked at sites like Great Lakes Wiki, an NYTimes graphic feature which featured Mad Magazine's back page (remember the page you folded to reveal a visual joke) that you fold via your mouse. The point of this was to show how lots of news content requires more than just reading to be fully engaged with it, or to understand the non-linear narrative presented.

The discussion was informative, as we considered how you take the perspective of the user as you develop news stories that include slideshows, videos, calculators, games, and all kinds of non-linear narratives. We did not solve this problem, but had a good time talking about non-narrative media and the challenges of working with new forms of content.



*People formerly known as audience

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/03/28/arts/20080330_FOLD_IN_FEATURE.html?scp=1&sq=interactive&st=cse">NYTimes Fold-Ins, Past and Present</a>