The Visual Studio Content Survey Results Are In! (Part 1)
Thanks to everyone who participated in the Visual Studio Content Survey. We’ve had over 4,600 responses, with a total completed survey rate of 64% (around 3,000 responses). I thought I’d share some of the results, and things we learned from the survey. There’s a lot of data, so I’ll report it in two separate blog postings.
Application Types
We wanted to learn more about our customers and the types of applications being built with Visual Studio. Almost all responses included Windows application development and half of the responses indicated Web application development. Other application types not listed as options in the survey included mathematical applications, industrial applications, mobile applications (we should have had that one as an option!), and scientific applications.
We also wanted to know which area(s) of the documentation were used most.
It was interesting to me that the survey indicated low usage of VSTS documentation, especially in comparison to Visual C#. This could partially be due to the way this survey was advertised. I work on the Visual Studio User Education (UE) team (there’s a separate UE team for Visual Studio Team System), and so I concentrated on advertising the survey on the VB/C#/C++/VSTO blogs. Next time I’ll be sure to advertise more broadly across UE teams. In future surveys we can drill down a bit more to understand why Visual C# documentation showed the highest use -- are there more beginner developers using C#? Are VB and C++ developers also learning C#? Is the C# documentation more thorough and therefore used more often?
Ability to Access Online Only Docs
Our intent was not to set off any alarms with this question! We didn’t mean to imply that we’re moving our documentation to online only. Instead, we wanted to find out what percentage of customers might have limitations that would prevent them from accessing our online content. We will be publishing updates to online documentation via continuous publishing, and we were glad to see that the majority of folks rated their ability to access online only docs at a 4 or 5 (5 being the highest). However, we do plan to continue providing offline content as well. The top reasons customers reported they wouldn’t be able to access online documentation is listed below.
“Due to the nature of my job, I am often without an internet connection (at clients' sites, etc.). So, I like having a local copy at those times.”
“I frequently develop on my laptop while commuting ~ 5 hours/day. I rarely have access to the internet during that time.”
“Some of our development is on classified systems which do not have access to the internet and are not near computers that do have access.”
“Slow internet connection through internal proxy esp. during office hours.”
Satisfaction with Documentation
The following charts show customer satisfaction with different aspects of our documentation. It shows that customers are generally satisfied with the accuracy, relevance, and effectiveness of the documentation; but that we could make improvements in discoverability and completeness of the content.
Resources Used
We asked which resources are use most when learning about a new technology and, as the following charts show, samples, non-Microsoft content, and Help integrated into Visual Studio scored the highest.
We also asked which resources were used to answer day-to-day questions about Microsoft technologies. A lot of participants saw this as the same question, and because they are closely related, we should probably rephrase the question on future surveys, and ask this just once :-). This one did have the addition of MSDN Wiki as a choice. Interestingly, the ratings for the Wiki were quite low. I think this is most likely due to folks not being aware of the Wiki; not because they didn’t feel that it’s a good resource. See my earlier posting on giving us Feedback on Visual Studio for information on the MSDN Wiki.
In my next posting, my report will concentrate on how customers find the help they need, whether they give us feedback on our documentation, and general feedback on the documentation and Help experience.
--Kathleen
