Target Audience

My target audience is going to focus mainly on the 20-40 age range. This is because this is the sort of age range that shops at home appliance places and constructs their own appliances. They are also an age range that have good enough skills to use the internet to be able to access the website. Almost anyone can find anything difficult but I believe that this age range, especially the 30-40’s will benefit from this a whole lot more. The gender of my audience will be male but women should definitely not be taken out of the equation because like I said earlier almost anyone can run into problems when it comes to construction. 

I think the main areas of people the website will cater too will definitely be students who are maybe at University or just moving into their new home. People like this usually have very little knowledge about making things and may find it hard reading instruction. Mainly they will be constructing objects that are quite simple to make for example desks but maybe confused about the little things described on the instruction book.. The other area will be parents of families, these people may have a decent amount of knowledge when it comes to construction and reading instructions but will be building quite large objects, for example bunk beds, wardrobes that will challenge even the most experienced home appliance builder. Places like ‘Ikea’ sell items that are quite low budget so I will be appealing to the middle-class/ slightly lower class region.

Looking at a website, https://www.ifixit.com/ that is a website about finding parts for electronic devices and including a board where people can help each other with problems by simply asking questions. This may not be exactly what I am doing but is very similar. I managed to gather a lot of helpful information. I found out that it is key to organise your website so that it is easy to navigate and easy to understand. Some 30-40 year old will benefit a lot from a website that is easy to use. Big buttons and a simple but stylish design works very well for this. A big search bar that works very well is also key due to how important it should be to quickly find have access to the information you need. Images are shown to be big and clear on the website and this is something that I will have to make sure I replicate when producing the animation and the pictures for the products. Clearly stating the product name and the model number (furniture equivalent)/ version (year produced), needs to be used on my website. 

Having a forum/ board is almost essential when making a website like mine because it allows people to talk about their own problems they may be having. A website that only features problems that the maker runs into can almost mean nothing to other people so allowing people to discuss between each other is idea for the website to do what is advertised. 

I have designed this little sketch on how I would like the homepage of my website to look. I really want to capture the simplistic look while at the same time looking as good as possible. The search bar is going to be the thing on the site that people should and hopefully will use the most. It will allow them to navigate around the site quickly and stress free. The homepage will feature almost everything the site has to offer so that people who are not a member will get a chance to look and see what they are missing out on. The forum will also be shown on the homepage so that users can quickly look at the trending topic floating around the community. 

I think the most important thing to get right when creating my website has to be the animations and the forum. What makes the website so unique is that to makes things that people struggle with easier to understand. Animations almost fully achieves the goal I have gone out to set but having the forum alongside the animation allows for it to be complete. 

I asked my dad whether or not had had struggled with constructing his own home appliances in the past. He believed that the instructions given to him were not 100% accurate and would sometimes skip parts of the assembly or not give parts of the assembly the full recognition leaving him very confused and having to go back steps to see what he had done wrong making him very angry at times. He would also finish assembling something and still have many parts left over thinking that he had forgot to screw something or missed out a part feeling like the appliance he had made may not be safe. He also sai that at times it was not clear enough on where the certain instruction was pointing to in the appliance and this would also leave him confused at times, this could also be down to the manufacturer however (Hole in the wrong place / not big enough).

I also asked my auntie and uncles to see how they feel about constructing home appliances. My auntie said she had run into trouble before, she tried to make a desk from Ikea, she said that it looked very simple and she thought that it would not cause her a lot of trouble. However she ended up getting stuck while trying to fit in the drawers, she spent many as she would put it, 'excruciating' hours trying to figure out what the problem was and had realised that the parts she was given were incorrect and were not viable for the construction of the desk. She has not tried to build her own home appliance since and said that she will not be returning any time soon. I will have to include a feature in my website that allows users to find out the parts required for their build so that they don't run into the same problem as my auntie did.