2021 Dendron New User Survey Results

The new user survey was open for several months in 2021, where we were prompting new Dendron users within VS Code itself. We had a few thousand respondents take the opportunity to give us feedback.

What backgrounds do our users have?

Users were asked about their backgrounds. Just over half of respondents had a background as Software Developers (53%), while the next largest group were Students (14%).

Approximations of remaining background options:

• Researcher (7%)
• Manager (7%)
• DevOps (7%)
• Technical Writer (4%)

The Other (8%) were spread across the following groups:

The percentages are in relation to the total number of respondents in Other

• Systems/Infrastructure/IT/InfoSec Administrators/Engineers (13%)
  • Solutions Architects
  • InfoSec / CyberSecurity
  • Systems Engineers/Administrators
  • etc.
• General Hobbyist/Multipotentialite/Polymath (8%)
• Data Scientist (6%)
• Artist (Designer/Musician/etc.) (5%)
• Author/Writer/Blogger (3%)
• Teacher/Professor (3%)

There were some smaller groups that stood out in the Other category, having one to three respondents:

• Therapists
• Legal (Lawyers/Law Graduates)
• GeoChemistry
• Pharmacist
• Biologist
• D&D Player
• Dentist

What are people using Dendron for?

New users were able to select all that applied. A majority of users are coming to Dendron, first and foremost, for a Personal Knowledge Base (80%) solution.

Approximations of remaining uses:

• Todos and Agenda (57%)
• Research (47%)
• Meeting notes (45%)
• Team knowledge base (29%)
• Publishing (22%)

The Other (18%) included the following groups:

The percentages are in relation to the total number of respondents in Other

• Student/Learning/Class/Academia Notes (4%)
• Journaling (4%)
• Content Creation and Non-fiction/Fiction Writing (3%)
• Project / Software Documentation (2%)
• System/Product Configuration and Design (2%)
• CRM (1%)
• Second Brain (1%)
• Gaming Notes (D&D, RPGs, General) (1%)

There were some smaller groups that stood out in the Other category, having one to three respondents:

• Scripted/Automated documentation creation
• Tracking, Reading, and Taking Notes on Books
• Recipes / Cookbook
• Drafting GitHub issues/MRs
• Event planning
• Presentations

Are users coming from any existing tools?

New users were able to select all that applied. More users said they were coming from No Previous Tool (26%) than users who found themselves looking at Dendron after something else, with OneNote (25%) coming in a close second.

Approximations of remaining previous (or parallel) tools:

• Notion (23%)
• Google Keep (19%)
• Obsidian (18%)
• Evernote (14%)
• Roam (5%)
• Logseq (5%)
• Foam (5%)

15% of respondents provided additional information under Other, providing a total of over 70 different tools and workflows. Here are the top Other tools listed.

The percentages are in relation to the total number of respondents in Other

• Joplin (9%)
• org-mode / org-roam / emacs (6%)
• Bear (6%)
• Apple Notes (4%)
• Plain Markdown or text files (4%)
• Trello / Confluence / Jira (4%)
• Typora (3%)
• Physical notes (2%)

Do users have plans on publishing their notes?

New users were only able to select a single response, if they were to respond to this question at all. A majority of users were Curious (39%) about publishing, or otherwise already saying Yes (36%) to planning publishing. The remaining respondents said No (25%) and were not interested.

What's Next

We've set aside the majority of this quarter, and the last, to iterate on the feedback you've given us (specific details to come in a future blog post). We are committed to making Dendron the absolute best tool and community for thought in 2022 and beyond!

If you like to be part of the effort, please take part in the 2022 Dendron User Survey and help us build a better tool for thought 🌱

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