Back in January, InfoQ published a User Survey and asked for people to take a few minutes and fill it out. Our reasoning for doing so was pretty straightforward - we wanted to know how we could improve the InfoQ experience for you, the user.
We were pleasantly surprised that within a few days of posting the survey we had received several thousand replies. Not only did people take the time to complete the questions but most people also left comments and even their email addresses if we wished to follow up with them. That really meant a lot to us.
The Data
Below are a few graphs showing some of the data we received from the survey. What do you think? Does anything here stand out or are the results what you expected?
What languages have you programmed with in the past year?
What Frameworks/Technologies have you worked with in the past year?
Which Agile-related practices do you use during development?
Are you planning or implementing either of these Cloud Computing options?
We also received a lot feedback from the form of comments. Two things came through loud and clear; you really like the content we put out and want to see more of it, and you really, really want the video interviews and presentations to be downloadable.
We're glad that you enjoy the content we put out because we enjoy producing it. We're always working on bringing new writers on board so you can expect the content quality to continue and the amount to increase.
We also heard that a lot of you are not terribly enthusiastic about the site layout and would like to see a redesign. Many people said it was too crowded, it "felt like reading a newspaper", and that the website felt like an "endless series of columns". The good news is that we are working on a redesign; the bad news is that it originally involved adding more columns:
Because of this feedback we've gone back to the drawing board and are committed to involving you, the reader, from day one. Here's a quick mock-up that someone at InfoQ put together as an alternative to the "let's add more columns" design, purely for conversation purposes (Note: this is NOT even close to a mockup, it was made by our CEO using MS Paint and Publisher just to show what might happen if we remove the left bar):
We still have lots of work to do on this and still have a lot feedback to collect so you can expect to hear more about this in the coming months as well as some surveys regarding how you use the site. Our plan is to create a variety of potential site mockups and to offer them to interested users to click around in, so that the pros and cons of each design is better understood. We will then continue to iterate towards a final design for InfoQ.com, and will eventually apply the selected design to the main site. Of course we're always open to comments and suggestions. You can always reach us at feedback@infoq.com and on Twitter @InfoQ.
What's Next
So there you have it, the results of our survey. After reading through this, do any of these replies surprise you? Do you agree or disagree with any the feedback we received?
We want you to know that while we'll be asking for you feedback from time to time on specific topics we want you to feel free to talk to us anytime about anything. Did you like (or dislike) an article that we posted? Do you have a suggestion for a new feature? Just want to say hi? You can say all that and more to us through one of the following feedback channels:
- Twitter via @InfoQ
- Email via feedback@infoq.com
- Google Groups via the InfoQ group
- LinkedIn via the InfoQ group
- Commenting on news posts
This will be something that's ongoing for us now. You can expect to see user surveys running every so often so keep an eye out for them as we're using this information to make InfoQ what you want it to be. You'll also see updates every so often from different people at InfoQ about what's going on behind the scenes; what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how you can help.
Speak up, we're listening.