Community Survey

What do users think about the adoption rate of 2008?

How do you find out answers to questions like this? Do you ask Matt Lombard? Do you ask Mike Puckett? Everybody has a personal agenda to push, so asking an individual who hasn”t studied the question scientifically isn”t much of a real answer, it”s just an educated and biased opinion.

Solidworks has recently put out another survey. This survey is trying to characterize the future of the “SolidWorks Community”. To me, this is a bit like trying to push a dollar sign shaped peg into a user shaped hole. SW Corporate is trying to artificially construct something that should happen organically. Like arabs trying to build an island.

Ok, bad analogy, the islands are kinda cool. The analogy should have compared something that is natural (a beach) to something that is forced by a commercial concern (maximized water frontage for maximized $$). Ok, still bad analogy, I don”t think the SW Community is necessarily trying to make money from this, but it is a PR thing to make restive customers happy.

Come think of it, people aren”t really clammoring for changes to the Customer Portal, but they keep coming anyway. What is the force driving this change? Coming from customers? Do you really think so?

Anyway, SW is asking what shaped island they should build. I”m saying, why are we limited to an island? Maybe what we really need is something else. Let us decide what we need.

So how do you avoid the mistake of asking what customers want and coming up with conclusions like SW reached for the 2008 software? Regardless if you like the new interface or not, 2008 is a CAD admin nightmare because of all of the default changes and re-education that has to take place. Certainly they asked customers before doing that, but which ones? and how did they interpret the results?

Take SWWorld Top 10 Enhancement Requests, this image taken from Mick Puckett”s site:

Frankly, I don”t consider any of those options to be incredibly important. My top 10 list would look like this:

1. Software is reliable and predictable at SP0

2. Mates and sketch relations need to be reliable and predictable

3. PropertyManager should not cover over FeatureManager exactly when FM is needed

4. SW should provide a utility to check your computer and verify that the SW and OS installations are correct (to eliminate finger pointing about crashes, and give some real diagnostic tools)

5. Complete Documentation, electronic or printed

6. “Performance Mode” interface settings to strip out the eye candy

7. Every feature that has a number in a ProperyManager needs to allow access to that number through Design Tables and configurations, double-click changes, and so on.

8. Consistent application of the Esc and Enter keys to exit and repeat commands

9. Apply the RMB OK to all features and functions throughout the software

10. Stop adding new useless functions just for AutoCAD users

My guess is that people got to vote on the things that SW has already decided to implement for the next version of the software. This would help SW with their claim to implement some very impressive percentage of users top 10 requests.

When you ask a question, one of the risks is that the way you ask the question pre-determines the answer. Why doesn”t SW step out of the way and just moderate a discussion between users? SW has shown that they aren”t much good at this kind of stuff, so I think its time to stop being so secretive about things and if you”re going to say that you”re a customer driven company, let the customers drive for once.

The whole thing about “community”, it”s just about people informally interacting and sharing stuff in a way that isn”t forced, and it isn”t commercial, it isn”t formal press-release type stuff, it”s just on the user information level. This should be driven by users, not by the big corporation. I think all of the stuff that SolidWorks Corporation does for “the community” should be transparent. There is no reason to hide the results of polls or surveys. If you want to build a “community”, then treat the residents like you”re one of them.

I feel like SolidWorks is in the mood for granting some wishes, like they have been listening, but it has only taken them 13 years to respond. I think it is time to become more transparent in the process. Somehow the process for deciding on new features in SolidWorks 2008 went badly askew. SolidWorks badly misinterpreted what users want, or at least badly executed that interpretation, with some of the new interface changes. I frankly don”t trust their decision making ability, even if they do claim to be listening.

Make a Wish List, where the users submit the topics, and then users vote and comment on them. In general, I”m talking about SolidWorks software functionality. The survey is talking about SolidWorks customer site functionality, but I believe the same concept should go for both. Get in on the discussion on the SW Forums