Entries Tagged 'Survey' ↓

Earlier this year, the nice folks at A List Apart undertook a survey of people who work on the web. The findings were released yesterday: Findings From the Web Design Survey including data tables if you want to do your own crosstabs.

An important issue has to do with the scope and definition of the survey itself. In one breath it’s called the “Web Design Survey” but elsewhere it was about “web professionals” and specifically asked about people who are not designers at all but writers, editors and others. As someone who is not a professional designer at all but has nevertheless worked on the web professionally since 1994, it was never clear if I was or was not within the scope of those to be surveyed. I hope they clarify that considerably in future surveys.

The Web Design Survey. “A few days back, we remarked on the strange absence of real data about web design and the designers, developers, IAs, writers, project managers, and other specialists and hybrids who do this work. In all the years people have been creating websites, nobody bothered to gather statistics about who does this work, using what skills, under what conditions, and for what kinds of compensation.”

This is what leadership looks like. Not empty punditry, rather going out to gather data that doesn’t yet - but should - exist. And all without fanfare or self-congratulation.