Topic: Autodesk wants you to take a survey ( semi-rant )

[Mark]

Reading Shaan Hurley's blog ...

Kate Morrical posted on here [her] blog about an upcoming AutoCAD LT webcast as well as an important online survey. Surveys are critical to understand your likes and dislikes of the product and help shape the future directions. If you are an AutoCAD LT customer please take a few moments and complete the survey.

Why should we? We spend plenty of time in forums like this one describing, in detail at times, the problems we're having as well as our likes and dislikes with the Autodesk software. I've got a better idea. Why don't you (Adesk) come pay us a visit. Spend some time with your customers, get to know them, you might be surprised!

Kate this is not pointed at you in anyway, shape or form.

[Spike Wilbury]

Why don't you (Adesk) come pay us a visit. Spend some time with your customers, get to know them, you might be surprised!

That will happen, next February, 31th 2009.... on next year, for sure, please wait and be patience.

[surveyor_randy]

Autodesk could give a hoot less about what the users think.  Do you know how many times I've had C3D crash and actually wasted time filling out the error report?  Too many to count.  After a while, I gave up typing in anything usefull and just started blasting them.

As Mark said, they should read their own newsgroups and visit sites like this to get information.  At least show that you care about your end-users.

[jnieman]

They do read those error reports.

I'm not sure how their system works, but I've been told by email and over the phone, by tech support a few times if I've been submitting error reports on the subject or not.

Once when walking a tech through my problem so he could recreate it, I recreated the crash, and he asked that I make sure I send in the error report... he told me he "got it" afterwards, and reviewed it, confirmed the bug, and passed it on.

They probably don't read them all, but it is a form of data, and when you just globally collect data with certain criteria, it's not to read every single thing, but to search for it later.

To think they read every single report, would be to think that Google employees read every single website that they catalog.

[jnieman]

However, my biggest gripe is that Autodesk is so large that they cannot possibly employ programmers who are also veterans of their relevant field, and as such their programmers are programming "blind" so to speak.  Sure, we have the Shaan Hurleys, Kate Morricals, and the like... but they are few and far between and can only do so much.

They don't know how to test or properly anticipate user actions and how the end-user will utilize the tools they create, and my gut tells me that the mistakes and quirks I run in to could quite possibly come from this.

[Keith™]

Having been on both sides of the fence, I understand the dilemma ...

As Josh pointed out, the programmers do not know the field of expertise, but I'll bet they do know the software, and its intricacies ... the problem is that there are literally tens of thousands of people making AutoCAD do things that it was not designed to do, and only a handful of people building and fixing it.

In short, the team of developers cannot imagine the millions of ways a user will break the software .. that is where feedback from users comes in handy. If you don't want to provide feedback in a structured manner, then don't gripe if the problem isn't fixed in that same structured manner.

If you truly have disdain for the software, I would think you would be clamoring for the opportunity to tell them how crappy their software is ... and while I agree there is forums and such, those are run by users, for users. It would be a nightmare for Autodesk to try and make sense of the mindless chatter that carries on from day to day on any one of a thousand AutoCAD forums.

[Kate M]

Kate this is not pointed at you in anyway, shape or form.

I know, but I'd like to answer anyway.

The real reason behind surveys is volume. Not everybody cares enough to really think comments through, post them online, and be ready to discuss them. We also need feedback from everybody else. It takes a lot less effort to fill out a multiple-choice (or even open-ended) survey than to contribute to a group like this one. So I could come here, and find three people who are willing to tell me why a certain feature needs to be improved, in a well-thought-out and rationalized way, or I could search my survey data for 100 people with the same opinion. Both types of feedback are valuable. Sometimes one response leads you to collect the other. ("Hey, this guy doesn't like this, I wonder how many other people don't? or "Hmm, lots of people in the survey feel one way. Maybe I can look on the forums for people who are willing to talk about it.")

Several people do spend lots of time in forums, but unless it's the MyFeedback arena, it can be a risky place to be. Not everybody understands that even if you work for Autodesk, you don't always know everything, and you don't always have a direct line into bug fixes or the product release schedule. (Any guesses as to how many levels above me that particular decision takes place?) They're also more likely to patrol the Autodesk-sponsored forums, or MyFeedback, rather than independent ones. Like it or not, we are perceived to speak for the company, and sometimes it takes a little bit of a balancing act to do so without having somebody take something the wrong way. Honestly, if I weren't already established here, it might have been hard to come jumping in with an "Autodesk" opinion.

If you really want to talk to Autodesk on a regular basis, join MyFeedback. In fact, please do. The more the merrier. Or send us feedback (Contact Us-->Feedback-->Products). Real people read those too. (I'm one of them for LT.) Otherwise, accept that most forums are peer-to-peer, and that there are other ways to talk to Autodesk.

[Spike Wilbury]

If you really want to talk to Autodesk on a regular basis, join MyFeedback.

http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=23977.msg290222#msg290222

[jnieman]

MyFeedback puts me off for similar reasons that the Adesk NGs do

I check them from time to time, but... meh... just gotta learn to ignore some things I guess.

[Mark]

Autodesk MyFeedback Portal

Welcome!

Our Feedback Program provides Autodesk customers worldwide with an exciting opportunity to be involved in developing our product lines.

The goal of our Feedback Program is to give you, our customer, a voice that helps drive the development of Autodesk’s products.  We have programs with small commitments of your time (e.g. answer product related survey questions) or programs that are more hands on such as Usability Testing or Beta Testing Programs where you can take future products out for a test drive.  

[Mark]

I took the time to email them 5 screen shots of how their pages look in Firefox 3.

[Kate M]

I took the time to email them 5 screen shots of how their pages look in Firefox 3.

Ow. (Although it looks fine in FF3 over here...) Subscription Center won't even let you in if you're not on IE.

edit: found a page that didn't work.

[jnieman]

I took the time to email them 5 screen shots of how their pages look in Firefox 3.

Ow. (Although it looks fine in FF3 over here...) Subscription Center won't even let you in if you're not on IE.

edit: found a page that didn't work.

Browser Check

We have detected that you are using a browser that is not currently supported or has known issues with some features within Subscription Center web site. In order to access all of the Subscription Center features, we recommend that you use Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Please click here if you would like continue with your current browser.

click the "here" link.

[jnieman]

Mark, I'm not sure what is going on for you, but on WinXP, FF3.0, I see the forums just fine.

[Mark]

Mark, I'm not sure what is going on for you, but on WinXP, FF3.0, I see the forums just fine.

what happens when you go here?
http://myfeedback.autodesk.com/index.asp?TypeId=1

[Tuoni]

Mark, I'm not sure what is going on for you, but on WinXP, FF3.0, I see the forums just fine.

what happens when you go here?
http://myfeedback.autodesk.com/index.asp?TypeId=1

b0rked for me - XP, FF3

[jnieman]

Mark, I'm not sure what is going on for you, but on WinXP, FF3.0, I see the forums just fine.

what happens when you go here?
http://myfeedback.autodesk.com/index.asp?TypeId=1

perfectly fine for me.

[gskelly]

Hmmm...

Looks good to me with Firefox 3 on Ubuntu Linux...

Greg

[rkmcswain]

what happens when you go here?
http://myfeedback.autodesk.com/index.asp?TypeId=1

Works just fine in FF, and always has.

[Keith™]

<off topic>Makes me wonder if FF is such a panacea after all<off topic>