Audience appreciation

Candidates give features that would suit almost any audience instead of the one described. For elderly, inexperienced users, "use pictures" is too vague; the credited version is "large, labelled icons, because an inexperienced user may not recognise an unlabelled icon". Fix: restate the exact audience, then pick a feature specific to it, not one that fits any audience.

Under an explain command word, naming the feature is only half the mark. "Use a larger font" for a visually impaired reader is correct but unexplained; the scheme wants the reason — "because a visually impaired user finds small text hard to read". It feels self-explanatory to you but not to the mark scheme. Add "because [fact about the audience]" to every feature.

A common scenario misread is answering for a different audience than the one described, or ignoring the stated purpose — naming features for young children when the audience is elderly. Read the exact audience AND purpose in the stem before choosing features, and check every feature against that audience only, not against audiences in general.

Content fine for one audience can be inappropriate for another. Colours, gestures, symbols and examples carry different cultural and age-related meanings, so an image neutral for one group may offend another. Candidates often say a design "looks unprofessional" instead of naming the offence risk. Identify what could offend and why, then propose a neutral alternative.

When asked for two design choices, candidates often give the same point twice in different words — "use bright colours" and "make it colourful" — which scores once, not twice. Each choice must be genuinely distinct with its own reason tied to the audience. Check that your two points solve DIFFERENT problems for the stated audience, not one idea restated.

In questions naming several audiences or needs — hearing impaired AND inexperienced users, or three readers of one display — candidates address only one and lose the rest of the marks, often forgetting the least obvious audience. Give a matched feature and reason for EVERY named audience or need, and check each feature fits the need it is paired with.