Survey of wired creatives asks pointed questions about future software wants, seems to drop big revealing hints about upcoming Adobe/Quark releases. But are they just educated guesses?

Over the last few days a survey has been traveling, via e-mail, to wired creatives the world over. Offering an inducement of a chance at a $500 American Express gift card for responding, the survey goes on to ask a great many probing questions about preferences, hopes, and tastes in layout and creative software – specifically, QuarkXPress and the Adobe Creative Suite/InDesign.

After asking the responder a few questions to ascertain firm size and scope, the survey explores what sort of upgrade/purchase options the creative would contemplate, given a range of notional upcoming software (mentioned as Much Improved Quark, Much Improved Adobe InDesign, and the cryptically named “Page Layout Perfected” and “Innovation Unleashed”), a variety of feature sets, and a variety of information sources (from tech comment board buzz to trade shows to client requests and media reviews). It’s a fairly complex questionnaire asking the participant to evaluate a total of thirteen possible combinations of possibilities and information sources.

After a few questions pass by, one cannot help but notice new product names being mentioned and surprising hints being given. Soon enough the questions display software names not yet in existence: QuarkXPress 7, and, surprisingly Adobe Creative Suite 3. Not only that, but the survey seems to posit the possible existence of a Adobe CS3 Premium (with GoLive as the web publisher) and Adobe CS3 Platinum, including recently-acquired Macromedia’s Dreamweaver and Flash.

The presence of these assumptions on the survey begs certain questions almost immediately. Does the survey company know something we don’t, or are they going out on a limb making guesses? Many of the features look as though they have their basis in trend-watching and touts about upcoming software releases, and some (this writer amongst them) have wondered if Adobe intends on jettisoning GoLive in favor of Dreamweaver.

At this point, there is no way to be certain. The survey itself is quite mysterious. Sent to a great many creatives worldwide, the survey was prepared by AbsolutData Technologies (http://www.absolutata.com) and emailed to Quark and Adobe registered users, but at this time nobody can figure out who commissioned the study.

An altogether curious phenomenon, it is documented in full detail in [1] this post by Pariah S. Burke on QuarkVsInDesign.com. The link to the survey has also been circulated about in at least one InDesign users mailing list.

Have you taken the survey?