Does the following scenario sound familiar? A new version of AutoCAD comes out and a feature you frequently use, like 3DSOUT for example, has been removed.
It makes you wonder if Autodesk is listening to its users.
The truth is Autodesk does not always know, at a detailed level, how its products are used in day-to-day environments. Quality assurance labs, usability testing, customer surveys, and beta releases all help, but they only touch a fraction of the real-world user environments. Hopefully that is about to change thanks to Autodesk's new Customer Involvement Program (CIP).
Customer Involvement Program (CIP) is a feature in most of Autodesk's 2008-based products that lets you anonymously share your product usage information and system configuration information with Autodesk. Similar to Microsoft's Customer Experience Improvement, Autodesk's CIP asks if you want to participate a few days after you install your 2008 product. If you select yes, the feature will begin reporting the features you use and any errors you encounter in Autodesk products and your system configuration. About once a day, when your system and network are not busy, CIP will transparently send a 100KB file to Autodesk's CIP servers.
Brian Souder of Autodesk, notes, "By building a more accurate understanding of which features are used most frequently or which features are most often used together, Autodesk will be able to better optimize the software. Also, by developing a more detailed understanding of customers' system configuration, Autodesk can better anticipate customer needs and respond accordingly."
An opt-in program
For those of you who might be concerned that Autodesk is "watching you," the company is quick to assure customers that CIP is an anonymous system that collects only information about command usage and system configuration. It does not collect personal information such as name, address, or phone number. Specifically, the following items are listed in the CIP Privacy Policy as being reported.
- Feature names, frequency, and usage duration
- Name and version of Autodesk products installed on the system
- Operating system name and version
- System configuration information such as processor, memory, and graphics card
- Format of data imported or exported from your Autodesk product
- Errors conditions encountered in Autodesk software
- IP address (used to estimate country of origin)
If you are not comfortable with Autodesk receiving this information, you can opt not to participate in this program. Or, once in, you can opt-out at any time by going to the Customer Involvement Program link under the help file. In addition, the service can be completely disabled during network deployment or via the CAD Manager Control Utility.
Performance Concerns
Autodesk 2008 software users who opt-in to the CIP will notice no performance delays as a result. Autodesk notes that CIP is designed to operate in the background and remain transparent to the user. Benchmark testing suggests this to be true in all cases except when large automated routines are running. Says Souder, "In normal situations, you can just turn on CIP and forget it. However, if you are going to automate AutoCAD, for example, to update 1,000 drawings, you might switch CIP off and gain a few minutes faster execution."
Ultimately, better software
Just as the AUGI Wish List tells Autodesk how users want to use its software in the future, CIP reports how it is being used today. Between the AUGI Wish List and the CIP, better software products are surely the result. So when the CIP dialog box (below) pops up, why not opt-in?
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