Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When creating any media product it is important to listen to the advice/concerns of your TA as they are ultimately the consumers that you will be targeting.

Uses and Gratifications
As we were creating products aimed directly at a TA, it was important that we covered all of their requirements as audience members. Many theorists such as Richard Dyer have commented on the audience's reasons for consumption. Below I have included a Prezi detailing different audience needs and how we fulfilled them...



Our Feedback
Analytics
Youtube has a very useful feature which allows users that have uploaded to the site the ability to break down their viewers in terms of age, gender and country of residence. This was a very helpful function as it meant that we were able to analyse how our video appealed to our TA based on who had watched it.

The gender analytics of our Youtube views

From this information we found out that roughly 3/4 of our viewers were female. Although we wanted to create an artist that appealed equally to both genders, I am not surprised by this result as it is more likely for females to watch videos with strong female roles as they are able to relate to the figure.

The areas in the world that have viewed our video

Our results also showed us that 97% of our views were from the UK. This was a great finding as it proved that our video was appealing to our primary TA of people living in the UK.

In order to collect more in depth information we conducted a questionnaire through the site SurveyMonkey.com. Here are some of the results that we got...

This result made me confident that we had successfully followed the conventions of our chosen genre as every person asked was able to identify the genre of our video accurately.

As we had expected, most members of our TA also listened to the genres of R&B and Hip Hop, however, I was not expecting to see that they also listened to such a large variety of other genres. I think that this was ultimately a good thing for our feedback as it proved that fans of music are likely to listen to multiple genres.This was also reflected when we asked whether they would like to find out more about the artist after watching the video as despite all of the different genres that everyone listened 91% of people said that they would want to.

I also decided to record some of the feedback that we received so that the responses were honest and occurred as they watched. Please click on the video which shows two members of our TA, Sam and Eridona, reacting to our music video. This form of feedback was particularly effective for me as I was able to see even the small reactions that they had. For example, whilst watching the video Sam continued to comment on Layla's outfit choices. This was encouraging for me as it meant that our attempt to appeal to our TA through the use of clothing was effective. However, it also opened my eyes to areas of the video that our TA did not like. For example, during filming Erdiona commented on the composition of one our shots, calling it a "bit wonky". This is an example of honest constructive criticism which ultimately aided our depiction of our TA's thoughts.

A group chat I sent our video to 

I also decided to get more feedback by broadcasting our video via Whatsapp. Whatsapp made this very easy to do due to users having the ability to send out direct links to content (as seen above). This meant that I could also get feedback in a non-professional manner, encouraging people to give their honest opinions in a less pressured manner. The group chat that can be seen above consists of members of our TA aged 16-25. The feedback given to me was overwhelmingly positive and made me confident in the products that I had created. This direct approach was also a very efficient way to get constructive criticism. For example, in the screenshot below I ask my friend Narina for her honest opinion on our video and whether there was anything that she'd change. She immediately replied with in depth feedback and even filmed an extract to illustrate her point, once again highlighting the importance of visuals when attempting to translate ideas.

Narina's response

This in depth feedback picked upon issues that had been seen by multiple members of our TA. For example, both Narina and Eridona picked up on the unsteady camera work at certain points within our video. This confirmed issues that we as group members also had with our video and confirmed our fear that the shaky camera movement had hindered the audience's ability to fully submerge themselves in our video at some points as they became that they were watching an unprofessional project. Had I the opportunity to do this project again, I would improve how smooth our camera work was in order to heighten our audience's ability to lose themselves in the video and use it is a form of escapism as suggested by Richard Dyer. Overall our feedback was very positive as people appreciated the hard work that went into our workshop and thought that it paid off.

A few more positive responses

In terms of feedback for our website I decided to conduct a small focus group in which I got my fellow peers (and therefore members of our TA) to use our site and see how they went. This brought to light issues such as links that did not work which were easily rectifiable. It also helped us to improve the accessibility of our site. For example, a member of our TA said "I wish the 'Live' page was called something else because its not very clear". In response to this I then changed the name of this page to 'Tour Dates' to ensure all members of our TA could easily find their way around the site.

TA members also commented on the use of colour within our site, saying that they thought that "It looked really cool" and that "It looked professional". They also said that our use of a video as a background was "unique" and helped our website to stand out in an "artistic" way. One piece of criticism that we received was in regards to our merchandise as I was told that it did not provide enough of a variety. If I were to do this project again I would create a larger option of pieces in order to fulfill all of my TA's needs. Overall, feedback for our website was very positive as all 10 people answered yes when asked the question "Do you think that the website is effective and entertaining?".

For feedback on our Album Cover I once again conducted a small focus group. This group consisted of members of our TA who were shown our album cover and then asked to answer a series of questions. This session brought to light issues of clarity concerning our cover. For example, originally the track listing of our song appeared "awkward" and "even", however, thanks to this feedback we were then able to fix this. Another thing that we changed due to audience feedback was our use of colour. In an earlier version of our album cover all of our writing was in a bright green colour, but after hearing the feedback from our TA we decided to change this to a bold red. I think that this was a very beneficial decision as its bold red colour now fits into the bright graffiti aesthetic. As well as this, the colour red is once that we have used throughout our campaign such as in our video and on our website, thus creating another synergistic element and further developing our brand image.
Overall, feedback was very positive for our album cover as people felt that the mid-air pose of our artist was "amazing". They appeared to understand and appreciate the Graffitti theme, leaving comments such as "I like the bright colours". I was very happy with these results as were my TA members as they gave our cover an average of 8.5/10.

Our final revised album cover

To conclude, gaining feedback from our audience members has been invaluable for us as it has given us an insight into the mind of members of our TA.