Results from ALA's 2007 Web Design Survey

Wednesday October 17, 2007 - 10 months ago

Posted by James Ellis / Filed under Web

Yesterday A List Apart released the results from 2007’s Web Design Survey, conducted in the spring of 2007. 33,000 web professionals participated, myself included. ALA’s 81-page report is a fascinating read.

In the spring of 2007, I distinctly remember being excited by the prospect of the survey. I was surprised to discover that this marked the first meaningful public research of the profession.

In answering each of the 37 questions, I was amazed that we (the web industry/community/whatever) didn’t know this stuff already — Who’s doing the work? For what sort of companies? Where do people live? Age, sex, ethnicity? How much money do people make? Education? Do people enjoy the work?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The questions dig pretty deep: prevalence of blogging/personal publishing, tracking career history/future, perceptions of bias, interest/methods of continued education.

The results are extensive. Tons of graphs and charts. ALA did well to commission statisticians Alan Brickman and Larry Yu to make sense of it all. The report is a beautifully crafted document. ALA intends to conduct the survey annually.

Thoughts

It’s interesting to consider the number of participants. The 33,000 figure can seem both big and small. I’m impressed that ALA managed to get that many people to carve out the time necessary to complete the survey. It’s more than you can fit into Madison Square Garden (19,763), but 33k isn’t blowing my mind. The world is sort of big, with a lot of humans. Microsoft alone employs 78,000 people. Over a million people live in Rhode Island. The human head weighs eight pounds.

I realize the industry is bigger than 33k, and that the survey only represents the dedicated core — those down for the cause, blog-readers and general-purpose nerds — but, it reveals that this whole dot com thing is propelled forward by a relatively small group of people.