SCA Blog

The draft toolkit for discussion at the workshop on 14 November is now available for download below. It is a draft working document which will be peer reviewed at the event.

SCA Audience Analysis and Modelling Toolkit - Draft (pdf)
SCA Audience Analysis and Modelling Case Studies - Draft (pdf)

Read on to find out more about the event.

Event: Audience analysis Phase 2: a Peer-Reviewing Workshop

Venue: the HEFCE offices on the 12th floor of the Centre Point building, 101-103 New Oxford Street, London, WC1A 1DD

Times: 12.30-16.30 (The event will commence with a light lunch at 12.30 – providing an excellent networking opportunity)

Registration: a registration form will be available soon via a link on this blog. In the meantime, please contact Emma Beer for further information and to express your interest in attending

Objectives

The objective of this workshop is to share reactions to the Curtis+Cartwright draft toolkit and supporting case studies, and to consider how to embed best practice in the community. It will also be a forum for discussing other related topics, drawing on the experience and expertise of the attendees.

Background

Improved understanding of audiences’ needs and behaviours is increasingly seen as important for services delivering digital content, and is at the heart of the SCA initiative. This project follows on from work undertaken by Chris Batt earlier this year relating to audience analysis and modelling. The project will identify and present current and emerging methods for audience research that could be used by the SCA partners and others to increase their understanding of and engagement with users. The work will be presented as a best practice toolkit, supported by case studies providing real-world examples of good practice.

The toolkit is for people in the UK public sector delivering online digital services who wish to research their audiences. It is primarily aimed at non-experts who do not have market research skills themselves, and who do not have access to dedicated market research teams. It is therefore likely to be most useful for people in small organisations/services, or those conducting small projects in larger organisations. It will provide the building blocks to enable people to design, conduct and apply their own bespoke audience analysis research, but it will not provide people with a ready made audience analysis programme.

Agenda

1. Welcome and introductions (13:00 - 13:30)

2. Discussion of the toolkit and supporting case studies (13:30 - 15:00)

What parts of this work were most interesting or valuable?

The toolkit:

• Is the content easy to read and understandable?
• Will it be useful for your sector? If so, who in your sector might use it, and how can the SCA reach them?
• Would you like to see anything else covered in the toolkit?

The case studies:

• Were they interesting to read? What did you get out of them?
• Do they effectively demonstrate the benefits of good practice?

3. Themed discussions (15:00 - 16:00)

• What other methodologies will help us meet the needs, wants and expectations of users now and in the foreseeable future?
• How can the toolkit be embedded in the community to facilitate changes in practice? What related topics would you like to see explored further?
• How can we help public sector organisations benchmark the audience analysis research they are doing now against best practice? Would this be helpful?
• How can we promote best practice in audience analysis across the public sector?
• Technology theme - placeholder

4. Round-up (16:30)