While you may have fantasies of a chat application that appeals to the masses, your chances of success are greater if you focus on attracting a particular population segment. Tom Brink of Diamond Bullet Design, a Michigan Web design company, agrees. It's best to start by gaining a solid understanding of your prospective users, what their goals are, and how they work. In selecting your audience, consider factors such as how much they currently use the Web to find information and communicate. If your audience is not currently on the Web, it's not very likely they'll be using your chat feature.
Brink recommends getting close to users through field studies.
By talking with and observing users in their work environments, and seeing how they typically communicate with their peers, you can get a good understanding of how to make the chat application more useful. For example, you may find that file-sharing capability is extremely important. You may also discover that options, like letting the user attach a picture to messages, or change font sizes and color, are very desirable. Review Your Chat Idea with Users. This is where you throw out any egotism and get the straight story about whether your chat idea is good.