Audience Profiles

Susan is a VP at a Forbes 500 company. She's a power user who always has a state-of-the-art computer with a big screen and a fat-pipe internet connection on her desk at work. The IT department keeps her computer updated with the newest bells and whistles. Her corporation strictly enforces web usage policy and runs a very agressive firewall which limits popup advertising. In the office, she listens to her favorite NPR jazz station in San Francisco over the web. On the road, she uses a Blackberry wireless device to check emails.

Mary surfs the web from home using a 56K phone modem. She shops at Ebay and Amazon, she participates in a online diabetes forum, and she reads her hometown newspaper online. After she got her computer at Staples, she installed anti-spam software and also child-safe filtering software for the grandkids.

Jonathan is a graphic artist who uses a Macintosh. He has a high-end Mac in his office and also carries an Apple laptop around with him. He often gets out of the office and carries his laptop to Starbucks, where he looks for the precious seat near the electrical outlet and connects to the web on their local Wi-Fi network. Jonathan has a personal blog on the web, which links to several of his friends' blogs. In his blog he writes about his daily experiences, what he's happy about and what he's angry about. If he's angry about your business, his blog entry will end up in all the major search engines.

Dorothy rotates between her different business locations, so she's on a different computer every day. Her business uses a web-based accounting system so she can access her numbers, and she uses an IMAP mail client so she can check her business email. At home she has a cable modem and a WiFi network, and often sits in the living room with her sons and works on her laptop.

The Jones' share a computer with a cable modem in the family room. They still use AOL because they don't want to change their email accounts, which they've had for years. They use the computer for email, web surfing, and homework. Becky, the youngest, isn't allowed online by herself. Middle child Alana IM's (instant messages) her classmates after school. Billy, the oldest, downloads bootleg music and burns CD's.

John is the general manager for a local home improvement company. His Pentium 250 computer is several years old, running Windows 95 and Netscape 4.7; he'll keep it until it dies. He uses the web for email and to surf his competitor's websites, although not all of them are displayed correctly in his browser. During the last year he's recruited several new employees by checking the Employee of the Month section on his competitor's websites.

Kathy has a Dell computer with a 56k modem. Her vision is impaired due to complications of diabetes, and she is legally blind. She surfs the web using software that "magnfifies" whatever she rolls her mouse over, and a special device "reads" her descriptions of the site's images. Since the introduction of federal Section 508 legislation and the development of the Web Accessibility Initiative, more sites are available to her.