Polar Bear Book: Survey 3 Results

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Survey 3: Software for IA

Methodology:

This survey was conducted in July 2006. Members of mailing lists sigia-l, IA Institute, CHI-RESOURCES, AIGA Experience Design, discuss@lists.interactiondesigners.com, and the Yahoo! Experience Design group were invited to participate. A total of 119 responses were collected. In this survey we asked:

Full results:

View the complete results: Excel | PDF

Summary of Results:

Question 1: Over the past 3 years, which three software products have you used *most* to perform information architecture work?

117 people responded, listing a total of 336 software products.

Visio was the clear leader, with 89 mentions. Following that, standard Office products were the most cited. Full results available on the “most used” tab of the full results Excel file.


Question 2: What software, if any, have you worked with in each of the following categories? If you've worked with several, please list them all. Skip those categories in which you haven't worked with any software.

The following shows the rates at which participants provided any answer at all for the category. See the "by category" tab of the Excel file for full, detailed results.

The most reported in category was Diagramming software. 79.5% provided an answer within this category. Of those respondents, more than half reported using Visio:

The next most reported in category was Prototyping software. 70.9% of total respondents provided an answer. Though we didn’t ask whether you were creating static or clickable prototypes, answers seemed to be about evenly divided between those products that lend themselves to clickablity and interaction (Dreamweaver and other HTML editors, Flash) and those that lend themselves to paper prototypes (Visio, PowerPoint, Photoshop--though we realize that these can often be made clickable as well).

For Content Management Systems 65.8% supplied a software name:

There was a broad variety of answers for this category. We did not ask respondents to specify the type of content management tool (enterprise vs. personal, etc), but have grouped answers below by general type. Most recipients did not provide product details beyond the company name.

More than half of you (56.4%) provided input on Search Engine software you’ve used. Perhaps not surprisingly, Google led the pack:

No other product/company received more than a few mentions.

37.6% responded to the Portal or Enterprise Knowledge Platform category.

Most of you have not had experience with Thesaurus Management Tools (19.7% responded)
Automated Categorization Tools (16.2% responded) or Collaborative Filtering Tools (8.5% responded).


Question 3: What additional software categories should be on the list above, and what actual software have you used for those categories?

Of the responses given, some of the more frequently mentioned included:

Full responses can be found on the “additional categories” tab of the full results spreadsheet.


Question 4: Is there any other software relevant to IA you feel is important or interesting (even if you aren't using it)?

There was quite a range of responses, from those of you who would like to find out more about newer tools like Axure, Intuitect and iRise, to those of you who simply want to learn more about tools that have been around a bit longer, such as Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop and OmniGraffle.

Full responses can be found on the “interesting” tab of the full results spreadsheet.


Question 5: How do you find out more about IA-related software and tools? Any websites, books, lists, etc. you'd recommend to others?

Not surprisingly, most of you make heavy use of internet-based resources. A few of the more common responses:

Full responses can be found on the “find out more” tab of the full results spreadsheet.


“Innovation rests on both research and practice, but which tries to be more than both, and doesn't ask 'Why?' but 'Why not?'”

— D. Grant Campbell