Calling All CAD Managers!

Greetings from your Vice President!

Your President, Kim, and I were in meetings with Autodesk last month, where we had the pleasure of talking to the AutoCAD Product Research team. Some very interesting project ideas have sprung from those discussions that I am collaborating on.

One of those has us looking for CAD Managers / admins to participate in experience research at Autodesk. Experience research is an opportunity to share your feedback and ideas on how to improve the Autodesk account management experience.

Would you have interest in joining us for a research session either in person or via video conference? You may also be asked to respond to surveys and online usability studies.

I’ve volunteered to reach out in finding a select group of CAD Managers for this effort, and of course, the AUGI forums are the perfect place to look. If you are interested in talking to the AutoCAD research team in person, please respond back to me at either frank.mayfield@augi.com or vicepresident@AUGI.com

Frank Mayfield
VP BoD

Whattup Veep -

Autodesk - especially the AutoCAD Product Research team - is always open to users, CAD managers/admins, etc volunteering our time & expertise to willfully give them more free market research.

Was there any commitment of action that this would-be select group actually subscribes to, by chance?

Or is just another iteration of where we tell them that we don't like their ideas, instead we actually need them to do [literally anything else here], they respond with delightful placation and then unceremoniously ignore that feedback & subsequently release yet another half-baked 'new feature'...?

Besides having an opportunity to offer them our time & expertise - which we can already do over at their Beta site - what's in it for us?

https://media.giphy.com/media/QN6NnhbgfOpoI/giphy.gif

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BlackBox

Or is just another iteration of where we tell them that we don't like their ideas, instead we actually need them to do [literally anything else here], they respond with delightful placation and then unceremoniously ignore that feedback & subsequently release yet another half-baked 'new feature'...?

---

It's incredibly sad, but the above is so true. I'm still not sure where the fault lies. I tend to think the 'product research team' is legit and does take input genuinely, but that that product team itself waters this input down and more of less just does does what they think is best. That's the meeting I'd like to sit in, to gain a better understanding of how [useless to me, fill in the blank feature] got into the application, while bugs that persist for a decade or more remain unfixed.

Frank, I think BlackBox has a legit question, that being "what is expected to be done with this group that can't be done via the beta team?". I would also ask, what are the goals of this group, and would participants be compensated in any way?

Thanks for your post Frank! :beer:

Hi
Just how far do they have to look there is a whole list of items on the wish list that have been there for a while. The last wish I posted I just got back responses they don't need that there's a work around. Why are we paying for work arounds for years.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rkmcswain

It's incredibly sad, but the above is so true. I'm still not sure where the fault lies. I tend to think the 'product research team' is legit and does take input genuinely, but that that product team itself waters this input down and more of less just does does what they think is best. That's the meeting I'd like to sit in, to gain a better understanding of how [useless to me, fill in the blank feature] got into the application, while bugs that persist for a decade or more remain unfixed.

Frank, I think BlackBox has a legit question, that being "what is expected to be done with this group that can't be done via the beta team?". I would also ask, what are the goals of this group, and would participants be compensated in any way?

Thanks for your post Frank! :beer:

---

Well said, as always. :beer:

I completely agree with RK, that the actual human beings I'm fortunate to interact with, several by phone, are some of the nicest people I've ever met - I honestly believe that they care and want to know about our ideas.

However, despite receiving what I believe to be their genuine agreement (after offering ideas, posing questions, etc asking them to correct me where I may be wrong, until we reach a logical consensus), literally nothing happens, even after multiple years, for something compelling enough that they held a conference call. The interest was real, or there wouldn't have been a conference call. The conversation was real; we exchanged ideas generally and detailed specifics where possible. They voluntarily subscribed to those ideas, verbalizing their agreement and even directed others on the call to follow up with X, Y & Z. Then... literally nothing? The end result defies [albeit my] logic.

I do not believe that fault - for inaction or poor choices after receiving comprehensive feedback, err, 'product research' - is on the shoulders of the UX folks (User Experience, Product Research Team, etc)... I believe those failures solely rest on the shoulders of managers & directors (aka leadership) that need to be replaced... They're making their UX folks come off as incredible polite but utterly ineffective, which isn't fair to them, not to mention holding products back from reaching their potential that we love to use daily and want to succeed.

As for the 'what's in it for us' part - AUGI has always been very kind to me - so I posed the question, anticipating Frank might tease some sort of 'carrot' to encourage such participation from others.

As example: Perhaps an AUGI Professional Membership, which still includes a FREE Autodesk Developer Network membership (ADN Standard; $1,400/ea), although actual compensation (money, gift cards, etc) is always preferred. :mrgreen:

Cheers