OUGD503 / STUDIO BRIEF 02 / PRIMARY RESEARCH 1 / POLL

In order to gain a knowledge about the target audience, I posted three polls onto my twitter timeline, asking various questions about how people approach news. My twitter followers are predominantly age 16-25, open minded and are fairly equal in terms of gender. This is ideal as in the brief, the Telegraph are aiming to appeal to younger people of working age who know their own minds. Since I am open minded and passionate myself about social and environmental issues, this has attracted other likeminded people to my online presence.

The poll began by asking users how they engage with the news, digitally or physically. Digital clearly outweighs printed newspapers by a long way, meaning online applications and websites are the target audience's prefered method of reading the news. This is due to the evergrowing efficiency and immediacy of the digital world. You can read information instantly while online, as opposed to going and buying a newspaper locally.

The next question involves asking users if they would engage with news more if they could customise and filter what they were interacting with. This relates back to our initial ideas of customising news categories according to what the user is interested in, and allows them to avoid news they do not wish to see. 73% of voters said this would make them read the news more. Again, technology is becoming more personalised, which is something the human mind always craves, to have it their way. In allowing users to customise aspects of their news application, this puts them in control of what they see, avoiding the user becoming irritated by articles not catered to their interests.

Since the Telegraph wants a fresh way for users to engage with 'comments', and create a community which is more constructive. This poll shows that most people never engage with the comments section of online news, meaning there needs to be a way of allowing people to feel interested in interacting with a social aspect of the application, perhaps something which is appropriate to the Telegraph's ethos, displaying opinions and comments in a constructive and engaging way. This is useful information that me and Jack can take forward in the development stage.