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Audience | Web Directions

Audience

• About the Survey
• The Audience
• Operating Systems and Browsers
• Markup
• CSS and Presentation
• JavaScript and the DOM
• Rich Media
• Server tech­nolo­gies
• The Cloud
• Conclusions and predictions

In this first sec­tion of the sur­vey, we asked respon­dents a series of ques­tions to get a sense of where they come from, the type of orga­ni­za­tion and indus­try sec­tor they work in, and what they saw their pro­fes­sional role as.

How did we reach the audience?

As with our first sur­vey, we used a low key approach to reach a wide vari­ety of web pro­fes­sion­als, par­tic­u­larly those who design and build web sites. It needs to be noted that this is not a ran­dom sur­vey, and those who chose to take the sur­vey are self select­ing. Nonetheless, there’s a broad cross sec­tion of loca­tions, indus­try sec­tors and employer sizes that sug­gests we’ve reached beyond sim­ply one nar­row seg­ment of the web industry.

As such, we believe there’s a strong over­lap between the respon­dents to each sur­vey, and so trends in tech­nol­ogy use, and the adop­tion of var­i­ous prac­tices hope­fully reflect under­ly­ing trends, rather than sim­ply a shift in the nature of the body of respondents

We aimed to reach as many web design­ers and devel­op­ers from around the world as pos­si­ble, using our own net­works, and via promi­nent web design and devel­op­ment focussed blogs and sites. As such, respon­dents are likely to be self edu­cat­ing, “early adopters” who keep abreast of devel­op­ments in their field. As we’ll see in a moment, they are much more likely to come from web focussed and design agen­cies, and the media and tech­nol­ogy sec­tors than any other indus­try sec­tor, but there is a sig­nif­i­cant range of sec­tors rep­re­sented, and sizes of orga­ni­za­tions var­ied widely as well. So, while the respon­dents are def­i­nitely of the “early adopter” pro­file, they cer­tainly don’t all come from the same types of organization.

This year we aimed for a more viral approach to spread­ing the word about the sur­vey. We emailed the list of respon­dents from last year, our data­base of past con­fer­ence atten­dees, and announced the sur­vey via twit­ter, where it was re-​​tweeted considerably.

The sur­vey was open for the month of February 2010. In total, just over 1400 (1402) peo­ple responded to the sur­vey. Our pre­vi­ous sur­vey took place just over 12 months before that, dur­ing late December 2008.

How did respon­dents describe their pro­fes­sional roles?

We gave respon­dents the option of iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as design­ers, devel­op­ers, or apply­ing their own label to their role. The aim was both to get a sense of how respon­dents saw their role, and also to allow us to cor­re­late philoso­phies and the use of var­i­ous tech­nolo­gies accord­ing to how respon­dents iden­ti­fied themselves.

36% of respon­dents iden­ti­fied them­selves as design­ers (rel­a­tively steady com­pared with 33% from the last sur­vey), and over half (56%) (up from 48.5%) as devel­op­ers. This would seem to reflect the increas­ing empha­sis on the use of JavaScript, and server side pro­gram­ming as a stan­dard part of web design and devel­op­ment, with respon­dents see­ing their role more as devel­op­ment than design. In the “other” cat­e­gory, where we gave respon­dents the oppor­tu­nity to nom­i­nate their role, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber specif­i­cally referred to being “design­ers and devel­op­ers”. Despite recent debate about whether “web design­ers” need to be able to actu­ally code their designs, for this audi­ence there would seem to be no issue there. Development is a key aspect of the role of the major­ity of our respondents.

In the sum­mary of last years sur­vey we observed

It would be inter­est­ing to see whether, par­tic­u­larly with the rise of Ajax and web appli­ca­tions over the last 3 or 4 years, the over­all trend is toward the sense that web pro­fes­sion­als are “devel­op­ing” for the web first and foremost.

It would appear that at least among the audi­ence we are reach­ing, that trend is hold­ing. More are describ­ing their role as, or includ­ing, devel­op­ment, and fewer solely as design this year from last.

How would you describe yourself?

DescriptionCountDesigner518Developer790Other199

Where did respon­dents come from?

Geographically, respon­dents came from all over the world, though with an unsur­pris­ing pre­pon­der­ance from North America, Europe and Australia/​New Zealand. This would reflect the nature of our par­tic­u­lar net­works (our being based in Australia, Australia and New Zealand rep­re­sents just under a quar­ter of all respon­dents, which is much higher than you would expect based on pop­u­la­tion alone.) But it also reflects the fact that the sur­vey was in English only, and the chan­nels by which peo­ple could dis­cover the sur­vey were largely in English.

Where do respon­dents work?

Organization size

One thing that very much inter­ested us with this sur­vey was to deter­mine how devel­op­ment prac­tices and philoso­phies var­ied depend­ing on the type of orga­ni­za­tion (small, medium and large enter­prise, pub­lic sec­tor, edu­ca­tion and so on). So, we asked respon­dents the size of the orga­ni­za­tions they worked for, as well as the sec­tor these orga­ni­za­tions come from.

In terms of orga­ni­za­tion size, with the excep­tion of stu­dents and hob­by­ists, at 3% (down from 6%) and 2% respec­tively, all the other sizes are quite sim­i­larly rep­re­sented, at between 16% and 22% of the respon­dents. This means there are good sam­ple sizes for com­par­ing responses by orga­ni­za­tion size, and hope­fully reflects some diver­sity of respondent.

What size orga­ni­za­tion do you work for?

2010

SectorCount%Student443.14%Hobbyist241.71%Freelancer29921.33%Small Organization (up to 10)29821.26%Medium Organization (up to 50)25818.4%Large Organization (up to 500)23716.9%Huge Organization (more than 500)22816.26%Other70.5%

2008

SectorCount%Student685.51%Hobbyist211.70%Freelancer22518.23%Small Company (up to 10)23519.04%Medium Company (up to 50)24419.77%Large Company (up to 500)18414.91%Huge Company (more than 500)23118.72%Other181.46%

Industry Sectors

For this part of the sur­vey, we made the first of the changes, by adding a new sec­tor “Web Focussed Agency”, in addi­tion to “Digital Design Agency”. Our intent was to deter­mine how many respon­dents worked in what might be con­sid­ered spe­cial­ist web development/​design agen­cies, as opposed to tra­di­tional media agen­cies, which focus on much more than just web design amnd devel­op­ment. Not sur­pris­ingly, a large per­cent­age (37%) of respon­dents work in Web Focussed Agencies, and another 9% Digital Design Agencies. As with the pre­vi­ous sur­vey, there was a def­i­nite long tail effect, with sim­i­lar per­cent­ages from var­i­ous sec­tors as in late 2008 responding.

Which sec­tor do you work in?

2010

SectorCount%Web Focussed Agency51236.52Digital Design Agency1268.99%Construction & Property60.43%Consumer Goods130.93%Banking & Finance342.43%Health211.5%Industrials00%Leisure80.57%Media805.71%Natural Resources10.07%Retail181.28%Technology16711.91%Telecoms181.28%Transport60.43%Utilities10.07%Engineering110.78%Local Government171.21%State/​Regional Government292.07%National Government322.28%Charity/​Not for Profit523.71%Education1087.7%Other1329.42%

2008

SectorCount%Design Agency31925.85%Banking & Finance332.67%Construction & Property20.16%Consumer Goods110.89%Engineering161.30%Health221.78%Industrials20.16%Leisure90.73%Media12910.45%Natural Resources20.16%Retail141.13%Technology23118.72%Telecoms151.22%Transport60.49%Utilities30.24%Local Government161.30%State/​Regional Government292.35%National Government302.43%Charity/​Not for Profit423.40%Education12510.13%Other16913.70%

So who are they?

Before we con­tinue into the results of the sur­vey, let’s quickly con­sider who the respon­dents are. Of course, there’s a good deal of sur­mise and guess work, but it’s worth putting our assump­tions down based on the details above.

Based on the ways in which they learned about the sur­vey (con­fer­ence atten­dees, users of twit­ter), it’s rea­son­able to sur­mise that they are more early adopter than early major­ity in pro­file. The fact that they are far more likely to work in sec­tors like Technology and Design Agencies than util­i­ties and indus­tri­als also sug­gests this. They are almost cer­tainly pro­fi­cient in writ­ten English. Geographically, they come from all over the world, but pre­dom­i­nantly from English speak­ing coun­tries, and the devel­oped world. They are most likely to work in design agen­cies, media and tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies, edu­ca­tion and gov­ern­ment. They are more likely to con­sider them­selves “devel­op­ers” than “design­ers”, or to con­sider them­selves a com­bi­na­tion of both. We’ll find out a lot more about them as we con­sider the rest of the results.

Next

Next we’ll take a look at the oper­at­ing sys­tems that respon­dents use, and the browsers the use and test their sites and appli­ca­tions with.