Viewer Profile

No doubt many of you will have multiple potential viewers of your work:

• HR Director
• Small Business Owner
• Curator
• Grad School or Residency or Grant selector
• and so on

You can probably write a half dozen Viewer Profiles for your site. Let’s get started by thinking about one key visitor. And don’t be generic, think of a specific person:

Viewer Profile:
Jennifer, 35, Art Director at a Web Design firm in Santa Monica. Jennifer hires photographers & illustrators on a per project basis. Her shop is known for a whimsical, edgy, contemporary design sense. Their clients include media companies, athletic wear, and fashion.

Jennifer was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and she studied Marketing & Design at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. She moved to California 10 years ago, and has been an Art Director at Web Design Ltd for the past 5 years. She works a lot of hours during the week, but loves to go to the water on the weekend, and is a competitive standup paddleboard racer.

In addition to your “sketch” in words, you might also like to do a “sketch” with a pencil, pens, or other media.

Research!

Learn as much as you can about your Viewer Profile person. Ultimately, you should message them and see if they’ll meet with you for a few minutes. But before that, let’s scour the web and see how much info on their work and career you can find.

The Experience of Visiting My Site

Now that you know a little bit about one of your potential site visitors, you can think of Jennifer when you’re designing the experience of your website. You can use her to help make your choices:

• If Jennifer is interested in your work, what does she want to see?
• What will she be drawn to?
• What’s irrelevant or distracting for her?
• Would Jennifer prefer one long page that scrolls and includes everything?
• Or a clean homepage with clear & concise navigation to the things you think she’d like to look at?

Sketch out (with a pencil, or words, or both) the user experience of your site:

• What do you want visitors to experience when they arrive on your Landing Page?
• Where can they go from there?
• What categories will you divide your work into?
• How will your navigation help them find what they want?