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Discover IA industry trends, software and education patterns among IAs, including our latest surveys:

2012 Salary Survey

Survey 3: Software for IA

Survey 1 Results | Survey 2 Results | Survey 3 Results | Survey 4 Results | Survey 5 Results

Methodology:

This survey was conducted in July 2006. Members of mailing lists sigia-l, IA Institute, CHI-RESOURCES, AIGA Experience Design, discuss@lists.interactiondesigners.com, and the Yahoo! Experience Design group were invited to participate. A total of 119 responses were collected. In this survey we asked:

1. Over the past 3 years, which three software products have you used *most* to perform information architecture work?

2. What software, if any, have you worked with in each of the following categories? If you've worked with several, please them list all. Skip those categories in which you haven't worked with any software. (the categories were: Search Engines, Collaborative Filtering Tools, Thesaurus Management Tools, Automated Categorization Tools, Content Management Systems, Portal or Enterprise Knowledge Platform, Web Analytics/Tracking, Diagramming, Prototyping)

3. What additional software categories should be on the list above, and what actual software have you used for those categories?

4. Is there any other software relevant to IA you feel is important or interesting (even if you aren't using it)?

5. How do you find out more about IA-related software and tools? Any websites, books, lists, etc. you'd recommend to others?"

Full results:

View the complete results: Excel | PDF

Summary of Results:

Question 1: Over the past 3 years, which three software products have you used *most* to perform information architecture work?

117 people responded, listing a total of 336 software products.

Visio was the clear leader, with 89 mentions. Following that, standard Office products were the most cited. Full results available on the “most used” tab of the full results Excel file.

26.5%: Visio
11.0% Excel
10.1% Word
8.0% PowerPoint

Question 2: What software, if any, have you worked with in each of the following categories? If you've worked with several, please list them all. Skip those categories in which you haven't worked with any software.

The following shows the rates at which participants provided any answer at all for the category. See the "by category" tab of the Excel file for full, detailed results.

79.5%: Diagramming
70.9%: Prototyping
65.8%: Content Management Systems
62.4%: Web Analytics/Tracking
56.4%: Search Engines
37.6%: Portal or Enterprise Knowledge Platform
19.7%: Thesaurus Management Tools
16.2%: Automated Categorization Tools
8.5%: Collaborative Filtering Tools

The most reported in category was Diagramming software. 79.5% provided an answer within this category. Of those respondents, more than half reported using Visio:

51.3%: Visio
13.5%: OmniGraffle
7.7%: Illustrator
7.1%: PowerPoint

The next most reported in category was Prototyping software. 70.9% of total respondents provided an answer. Though we didn’t ask whether you were creating static or clickable prototypes, answers seemed to be about evenly divided between those products that lend themselves to clickablity and interaction (Dreamweaver and other HTML editors, Flash) and those that lend themselves to paper prototypes (Visio, PowerPoint, Photoshop--though we realize that these can often be made clickable as well).

20.1%: Dreamweaver
15.6%: Visio
7.1%: Flash, Photoshop and HTML (no specified product)

For Content Management Systems 65.8% supplied a software name:

There was a broad variety of answers for this category. We did not ask respondents to specify the type of content management tool (enterprise vs. personal, etc), but have grouped answers below by general type. Most recipients did not provide product details beyond the company name.

Of the products usually considered enterprise content management tools, Documentum (8.4%), Interwoven (5.7%), Stellent (5.2%), Vignette (5.2%) and Microsoft CMS (4.5%), received the most mentions.
Of the tools that are generally associated with blogging, or smaller-scale personal content tools, WordPress (5.2%) and Movable Type (3.2%) and we most often mentioned.
Of the open source tools cited, Drupal (3.9%), Plone (3.2%) and Joomla (1.9%) and were each cited several times.

More than half of you (56.4%) provided input on Search Engine software you’ve used. Perhaps not surprisingly, Google led the pack:

41.7% Google
25.0% Verity (now Autonomy)

No other product/company received more than a few mentions.

37.6% responded to the Portal or Enterprise Knowledge Platform category.

17.7%: Microsoft SharePoint
14.5%: Websphere Portal
8.1%: Plumtree Portal
6.5%: Oracle Portal

Most of you have not had experience with Thesaurus Management Tools (19.7% responded)

Automated Categorization Tools (16.2% responded) or Collaborative Filtering Tools (8.5% responded).

For Thesaurus Management, the clear leader was MultiTes, with 7 of the 17 (41.2%) of the responses given.
In Automated Categorization Tools, Endeca, Verity Profiler and xSort received 2 to 3 mentions each
For Collaborative Filtering Tools, Endeca and del.icio.us received multiple mentions.

Question 3: What additional software categories should be on the list above, and what actual software have you used for those categories?

Of the responses given, some of the more frequently mentioned included:

Usability testing (including Morae and Macromedia Captivate)
User research (including Ethnio, MindCanvas and SurveyMonkey)
Presentation and visualization (including PowerPoint, Photoshop, Keynote, Word)
Card sorting (including EZSort)

Full responses can be found on the “additional categories” tab of the full results spreadsheet.

Question 4: Is there any other software relevant to IA you feel is important or interesting (even if you aren't using it)?

There was quite a range of responses, from those of you who would like to find out more about newer tools like Axure, Intuitect and iRise, to those of you who simply want to learn more about tools that have been around a bit longer, such as Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop and OmniGraffle.

Full responses can be found on the “interesting” tab of the full results spreadsheet.

Question 5: How do you find out more about IA-related software and tools? Any websites, books, lists, etc. you'd recommend to others?

Not surprisingly, most of you make heavy use of internet-based resources. A few of the more common responses:

Mailing lists: SIGIA, IXDA, IAI, CHI, UPA
Web sites: Boxes and Arrows, IA Wiki, Information Architecture Institute site
Conferences, books and word of mouth were other popular ways of keeping up with IA software (and presumably other IA topics).

Full responses can be found on the “find out more” tab of the full results spreadsheet.

This page was last modified on July 8, 2008 05:25 PM.

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