Continuing my quest for data… 
When you have a couple minutes, would you mind filling out this 4 question survey: http://4430958.polldaddy.com/s/new-survey-1
Not sure if anything will come of this, but I’m interested to see what the results look like. I’ll post a follow up with the results after they’re in.
lessbloat, 
Shane Pearlman, and 1 other are discussing. 
kaiser 5:46 pm on July 4, 2012 Permalink
If you allow a slight criticism: The questions are a bit vague regarding target audience. Is the survey only aiming at “users”, or at “developers” too? If you write “Customization”, I don’t know if I should answer from the perspective of code (»this is hard coded and I need to change it«), or as “user” (»I want to insert an image, but don’t find the button/link easily«).
lessbloat 5:50 pm on July 4, 2012 Permalink
Sorry.
I know, from a survey design perspective this one is likely full of flaws… I just whipped it up quickly this morning. To answer your question, I was thinking more of from the users perspective. I’ll try and be more conscientious moving forward.
Shane Pearlman 12:13 am on July 5, 2012 Permalink
Done. I’ll apologize for the sparseness of the reply. Fundamentally, I basically pointed out the two areas which seem to be the constant bane of our clients existence, sidebar/widget & menus. If we could focus there, I would love to help put energy towards bringing those things into a more natural intuitive pattern.
The abstraction of widgets is smart in many cases, but our users often just don’t get it. I can’t tell you the number of times people ask me why they have to go somewhere else in the admin to add content “to a page”. When I try to explain that the content they are referring to is the sidebar and isn’t “a page”, they just point to the front end and ask “I see it right there on the page. I want it right there. Looks like a page to me. You are making this too complicated.” And in a way they are right. The amount of code we have to do in a theme to allow the flexible placement of content and the overriding of sidebars (we have plugins for this) is simply an indicator of an incomplete workflow. My wish: you can edit all the appropriate content for a view (the content a template outputs in completion) from one place.
lessbloat 5:33 pm on July 6, 2012 Permalink
Made a mental note to get you involved in these workflow designs.
Thanks Shane.
lessbloat 6:36 pm on July 6, 2012 Permalink
Results are in. 36 people filled out the survey (thanks to everyone who participated!).
First my little disclaimer
This survey is very much self-selected. If I had to label participants, they’d almost all fall into the “advanced user” bucket. With that said, I was still very interested to see which areas you guys thought needed some love.
I’ll list the top 10 for each group:
Areas that need some love
1) Media manager
2) Image upload
3) Posting videos
4) Mobile responsiveness (tied for second)
5) Dashboard
6) CMS functionality
7) Custom Menus
8) Settings (tied for sixth)
9) Main nav
10) Help
Critical for new users
1) Posting images
2) Posting text
3) Media manager
4) Welcome screen
5) Customization
6) Help
7) Dashboard
8) Themes
9) Social sharing
10) Settings
Critical for advanced users
1) Media manager
2) CMS functionality
3) Posting images
4) Plugins
5) Customization
6) Mobile responsiveness
7) Stats
8) Posting text
9) Social sharing
10) Settings
Cluttered or confusing
1) Posting images
2) Media manager
3) Posting videos
4) Custom menus
5) Settings
6) CMS functionality
7) Widgest
8) Dashboard
9) Plugins
10) Mobile responsiveness
And if you add all of the points up (1-5) for all 4 questions, you get:
534 Media Manager
534 Posting images
422 Settings
418 CMS functionality
412 Posting videos
412 Widgets
405 Custom Menus
389 Customization
387 Mobile responsiveness
360 Dashboard
354 Posting text
352 Themes
350 Plugins
336 Social sharing
331 Main nav (left & toolbar)
328 Users
309 Help
298 Stats
293 Comments
277 Welcome Screen
261 Tools
Thoughts?
Andrew Nacin 9:56 pm on July 6, 2012 Permalink
534 Media Manager, 534 Posting images. I never would have guessed.