decision science strategy

About this sample

I developed this strategy presentation for a graduate-level decision science course at the University of Washington in 2020.

The presentation was a team effort with four other people. Our “client” needed a website for her nonprofit, which offers courses to juvenile criminal offenders to help them make better decisions.

Using decision science principles, we were required to:

• Create an audience profile for the website.
• Propose a site name.
• Provide recommendations for three web pages: Home, Blog, and Donate.

I developed the structure and design of the presentation, crafted content for 7 slides, and acted as the editor for our team.

Before we get into the target audience details, let’s talk about what we want the audience to DO when they visit the website. 

The purpose of the website will be for the audience to take four specific actions. It will help them to learn about your nonprofit, subscribe to the blog, donate their money, and volunteer their time.

In order to convince our audience to act, we need to understand who they are and what matters to them at a deeper level. 

We looked at 6 factors, listed here, that directly contribute to people’s decision making and motivations. All of these are based on marketing and decision science principles. 

We assume you’re familiar with demographics and lifestyle, colored in dark gray—those are common in marketing, so we won’t cover them now. The last four factors, colored in light gray, are relatively new concepts. Briefly, we’d like to cover why they matter, how they informed this audience profile, and how we can use them to create effective content.

Co-decision-makers are the groups or people who may influence the audience’s decision to act in a certain way. They’re important for a few reasons. [Review the bullets and related website recommendations.]

Those are the 6 factors that impact audience decision making. Any questions? [Pause for questions.] OK, great. 

Now let’s look at the target audiences and review the 6 factors as they relate to each.

We’ve identified 3 target audiences for your website. [Read them.]

For each target audience, we created a detailed persona. Your team can use these personas to get into the headspace of each audience and create content that aligns with their perspective and needs.