Hi all,
If you have fifteen minutes to spare, we’d be very grateful if you could fill in the following survey about how you use Scrivener and what you’d like to see in its future:
scrivenersurvey.eu.research.net/r/F9QH32L
Many thanks,
Keith
Keith, I spent time this morning filling in the survey and got as far as the page on how frequently I use features. I answered it fully, but it kept returning me to the page with “Error: this question needs answering”. The question was “How often do you use Scrivenings view?” Although I answered “Often”—the real answer being “most of the time”! 
—it highlighted “Never” and I couldn’t proceed.
I’ll try again later!
Mark
Mr X and KB, I did not have that error last night right after KB posted. I did the survey via safari on ios14.
Hi Mark, that’s strange - we haven’t had any other users with issues. Was it definitely not pointing to another row in the writing section that had been missed? That is probably the clunkiest part of the survey.
Thanks for filling it in!
Thanks for setting up this survey. Filled it in completely (didn’t have issues - Safari 14 on the Mac) and I hope it gives some of the answers or clarity you are looking for, from your user base.
I was using Opera on my iPAD. We are about to change IP any moment now, so I’ll try again with Safari once the network has been switched over.
Mark
My favourite response so far is from the guy who ticked “Other” for everything so that he could tell us in all-caps in every single answer that we’re idiots and thieves for being late with the Windows version.
Done, thanks for looking for feedback from your users. Especially when it comes at the risk of people screaming at you in all caps!
Ps: no issues completing it here using Safari.
Just filled it out, very excited by the implications of some of the questions!
Hey that wasn’t too bad! I’ve completed much longer surveys.
I do hope you don’t opt for a simplified version of Scrivener. I think it’s just fine the way it is.
BTW, as a trans person I do appreciate you putting non-binary gender options in the survey.
Just stumbled on and completed the survey. I hope you had a damned good laugh at seeing the above. They’re out there! 
FWIW I abandoned the survey after a while – too long, alas, for the gap I had allocated.
Was there a warning of its length at the start, or any estimate of the time required, or remaining at each stage ?
I don’t remember any such warnings or estimates …
This is an unexpectedly long survey – and if such warnings have, in fact, been omitted, you might be able to plug a bit of data loss (and enhance the general impression of courtesy and active theory of mind : -) by adding them.
Both the original post (at the top of this thread ) and the email mention 15 minutes.
I think I took slightly longer than that, but a couple of my answers were detailed (NB: They weren’t in shouty capitals and I didn’t mention the Windows version at all…)
Fair enough – I probably started it out of that context from a copied link.
It would helpful and productive, I think:
- to bring those estimates into the survey itself,
- and, if 15 mins is turning out to be more figurative or optimistic than researched, to adjust it a bit from the online data.
This is already in there, though - it’s right there on the survey introductory page, which is the first page you land on when you click the link for the survey. From that front survey page:
Ten minutes may be optimistic, but it depends on the options selected; fifteen minutes is about right. (For the 1,500+ responses so far, the average time taken has been thirteen minutes according to the stats.) There is unfortunately no way to include a progress bar in Survey Monkey when you use branching page logic (which this survey does, and which is why the time required may vary). We did also say 15 minutes in the email and in all announcements about the survey, so we have tried to warn users about how long it will take!
If you get a little more time later, we’d be very grateful if you are able to fill it in, as we are very interested in the results, and the more users that help, the more useful those results will be.
They certainly are! In all fairness to that one, he did get funnier as the responses went on, with one all-caps reply saying that they had tried to find a keyboard without a caps key on Amazon since they tended to over-use it when angry, but no such thing existed, so MAYBE YOU CAN INVENT ONE IF YOU EVER FINISH SCRIVENER 3!!! (Or words to that effect.)
To everyone else, thanks for completing the survey!
All the best,
Keith
Do you plan on sharing the results of the survey (at least in broad strokes)?
Someone asked this on Facebook yesterday, too. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I don’t see why not. I may put together a blog post gathering some of the results in a month or so, once the survey has run for a while.
I would have been a bit more reassured and rather more likely to have returned and completed the thing,
if I had at least seen an acknowledgement (or even, really, an awareness) that you are asking people to give time to rather a long survey, and that you appreciate their ploughing through all the micro-detail for you.
Facty protestations that your users are ‘wrong’ feel a bit less reassuring, and score a bit weakly on theory of mind.
(Particularly in the light of comments like that of Xiamenese above, who had ‘spent the morning’ dutifully ploughing through, only to get blocked).
Quality in these things is a ratio of reward divided by cognitive effort. You need to up the reward a bit, if only in expressions of professional realism, understanding, appreciation, if people are going to feel inspired to dive back in and plough through all that stuff again, aware that some others have done so only to be blocked by glitches.
It’s a bit long, over-detailed and claustrophobic in there …
Great - the “danger” with posting the results is that some may complain / disagree with the results. One key is to make sure to let people know that this is a data gathering exercise to inform future plans, and not a guarantee of any future products, etc. (This won’t stop people from complaining though - of course. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.)
I’m very sorry for not grovelling more.