Exercise 2: Add Audience and Tone

Objective

Practice rewriting the same request for three different audiences and with three different tones — and observe how significantly the output changes based on those two variables alone.

Background

Audience and tone are the two most commonly skipped elements in AI requests. They are also two of the most impactful. The same topic, written for different readers in different registers, produces entirely different content.

This exercise isolates those two variables so you can feel how much they control.

Task

You will work with one base request and modify it three ways.

Base request:

Explain what our new analytics dashboard does and why it matters.

Part 1: Three audiences

Rewrite this request three times — once for each audience below. Keep all other elements (tone, format, length) the same across all three. The only thing that changes is the audience.

Audience 1: Executive leadership — non-technical, focused on business outcomes

Audience 2: Customers — product users who are familiar with the platform but not highly technical

Audience 3: Internal engineering team — technical, already familiar with the general architecture

Submit all three to AI and compare the outputs. Note:
- How did vocabulary change?
- How did the level of explanation change?
- What assumptions did AI make for each reader?

Part 2: Three tones

Now take the original base request and rewrite it three times — once for each tone below. Keep all other elements the same. The only thing that changes is the tone instruction.

Tone 1: Formal and professional — suitable for a press release or official announcement

Tone 2: Direct and conversational — like a knowledgeable colleague explaining something over Slack

Tone 3: Warm and encouraging — like a customer success rep welcoming a user to a new feature

Submit all three and compare the outputs. Note:
- How did sentence length and structure change?
- How did word choice change?
- Which felt most useful for the actual purpose?

Example input

Audience-adjusted version for executive leadership:

Explain what our new analytics dashboard does in terms of business outcomes for a non-technical executive audience. Focus on what decisions it enables, what visibility it gives leadership, and how it reduces dependence on manual reporting. Under 200 words.

Success criteria

Your rewrites should produce noticeably different output for each audience and tone variant. If two of your outputs look similar, the audience or tone instruction was not specific enough — sharpen it and try again.

Optional reflection question

Were there audiences or tones where AI struggled to adjust? What additional guidance would have helped?