react-test/docs/pages/blog/2019-developer-survey-results.md

---
title: "The 2019 Material UI Developer Survey: here's what we discovered"
description: Your feedback helps us to build better products. Here's what we learned about your needs in our annual survey.
date: 2019-03-16T00:00:00.000Z
authors: ['oliviertassinari', 'mbrookes']
tags: ['Developer Survey']
manualCard: true
---

While we are currently working on the upcoming release of Material UI v4, we need to prioritize our
roadmap for the coming year. To refine our focus, we launched a developer survey last month,
to which we received 734 contributions. Thank you for your participation!
The survey is now closed and this is a summary of the results.

The survey was broken into three sections, "Introduction", "About you" and "Your product".

## Introduction

Here we asked for the good, the bad and the ugly. Thankfully, it's mostly good, but we can focus
on the things that will make it even better.

### 1. How would you feel if you could no longer use Material UI?

<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/1.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Pie chart: 74.7% Very disappointed, 18.9% disappointed, 6.4% not disappointed." />

An overwhelming majority of respondents (over 93%), would be disappointed or very disappointed if
they could no longer use Material UI. The benchmark for "very disappointed" is 40%,
so we're on the right track. Don't worry, Material UI isn't going away any time soon –
we want to focus on making even more of you "very disappointed", as it were!

Curiously, the 6.4% who said they would _not_ be disappointed if they could no longer use
Material UI collectively gave a Net Promoter Score of 68%, which is
[higher than that of all respondents as a whole](#5-how-likely-is-it-that-you-would-recommend-material-ui-to-a-friend-or-colleague),
so we know they love us really. 😘

### 2. Who do you think would most benefit from Material UI?

This word cloud was generated with wordclouds.com.

<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/2.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Word cloud of who would benefit most" />

Developers, developers, developers! (And "anyone" and "everyone", apparently! ) This is understandable, given the
[job role demographic](#7-which-of-the-following-best-describes-your-current-job-role)
of the majority of respondents. We'll continue to work on the developer experience, making it
easier to get started with, use, and customize Material UI.

### 3. What is the main benefit you receive from Material UI?

<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/3.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Word cloud of the main benefit of Material UI" />

The responses variously commented on being able to focus on the business logic, time saved,
good looking components, ease of use, design consistency, good documentation.
We'll make sure that we continue to do more of the things that benefit you the most.

### 4. How can we improve Material UI for you?

We have grouped the answers into different categories.
The prefix corresponds to the number of times the concern was mentioned.
It's sorted descending, with the most important concerns first:

- 135 **More components:**
  - 56 Non-specific
  - 21 Date picker
  - 10 Autocomplete
  - 9 Layout
  - 8 Table++
  - 5 Carousel
  - 5 Slider
  - 3 Video
  - 2 Calendar
  - 2 Menu nesting
  - 2 List - draggable
  - 1 Tree view
  - 1 Color picker
  - 1 Dense mode
  - 1 For landing pages
  - 1 Group avatar
  - 1 Image gallery
  - 1 Image picker
  - 1 Menu - dropdown
  - 1 Mobile
  - 1 Rating
  - 1 Timeline
  - 1 Transfer

- 50 **Better customization:**
  - 23 Non-specific
  - 15 Docs
  - 8 Easier
  - 3 Theme
  - 1 Colors

- 36 **Better documentation:**
  - 11 Non-specific
  - 7 More examples
  - 5 Beginner tutorials
  - 4 Video lessons
  - 2 API pages
  - 2 Icon explorer
  - 1 Best practices
  - 1 Customization
  - 1 Global CSS
  - 1 Demo source scroll issue
  - 1 Server-side rendering

- 31 **TypeScript:**
  - 14 Non-specific
  - 13 Migrate more demos
  - 3 withStyles -> makeStyles
  - 1 Rewrite

- 24 **Performance:**
  - 23 Non-specific
  - 1 Table

- 19 **Bundle size**
- 17 **Material Design Update**
- 16 **styled-components:**
  - 10 Support
  - 6 Migration

- 14 **Fewer breaking changes**
- 10 **More page layout examples**
- 9 **Theme:**
  - 3 More colors
  - 3 Live editor
  - 1 Non-material font example
  - 2 Responsive typography

- 8 **React.StrictMode support**
- 8 **React Native support**
- 6 **Accessibility:**
  - 4 Non specific
  - 1 Docs
  - 1 SkipNav

- 6 **Hooks at 100%**
- 4 **Animations**
- 4 **Long Term Support**
- 4 **Simplification**
- 3 **Gatsby plugin**
- 3 **i18n**
- 3 **Premium themes**
- 3 **Showcase, design inspiration**
- 2 **Clear Roadmap**
- 2 **Preact support**
- 2 **Simpler: closer to DOM nodes**
- 2 **Styleless components**
- 1 **Web component integration example**
- 1 **Collect user feedback**
- 1 **Non-Material Design theme example**
- 1 **Right to left**
- 1 **Storybook addons**
- 1 **Styles: better docs**
- 1 **Testing**

### 5. How likely is it that you would recommend Material UI to a friend or colleague?

<figure style="margin-inline-start: 0;">
  <img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/5a.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Bar chart of raw data" />
  <figcaption style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;">Raw data.</figcaption>
</figure>
<br />
<figure style="margin-inline-start: 0;">
<img style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/5b.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Pie chart: 70.6% promoters, 24.8% neutrals, 4.6% detractors" />
  <figcaption style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;">Result.</figcaption>
</figure>

Developers gave Material UI a [Net Promoter Score](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter)
(promoters less detractors) of 66%. Given the NPS range of -100 to +100, a "positive" score or NPS
above 0 is considered "good", +50 is "Excellent", and above 70 is considered "world class."

## About you

### 6. How did you hear about Material UI?

Multiple options were allowed.

| Channel(s)                  | Number |
| :-------------------------- | -----: |
| Search                      |    344 |
| Word of mouth               |    112 |
| Search, Word of mouth       |     47 |
| Search, Social              |     25 |
| Social                      |     22 |
| Blog                        |     14 |
| Search, Word of mouth, Blog |     11 |

<br /><br />
<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/6.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Bar chart: 74.3% search, 29.6% word of mouth, 8.2% Social, 4.3% blog." />

### 7. Which of the following best describes your current job role?

<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/7.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Bar chart: 358 Full-stack developers, 189 Frontend developers, 103 Entrepreneurs, 31 Beginners, 42 Other" />

No huge surprises here!

### 8. How big is your organization?

<img  src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/8.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Bar chart: 61 Hobby, 98 Self-employed, 181 x 2-10, 167 x 11-50, 126 x 51-500, 89 x 500 +" />

Material UI is most popular with small to medium sized organisations,
perhaps because beyond a certain size, organizations have teams building their own design system and framework.
We want to continue to make it easy to use the component logic of Material UI while allowing
designers to give it a bespoke look and feel for their organization.

### 9. How long have you been developing with JavaScript

<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/9.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Bar chart: 26 x I'm just getting started!, 43 x 6 months +, 150 x 1 year +, 179 x 3 years +, 155 x 5 years, 82 x 10 years +, 47 x 15 years +" />

A nice bell curve, with the majority of developers having 1 to 5 years experience with JavaScript.

### 10. How long have you been developing with React?

<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/10.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Bar chart: 99 x I'm just getting started!, 77 x 6 months +, 301 x 1 year +, 171 x 3 years +, 32 x 5 years - bleeding edge baby!" />

### 11. How long have you been developing with Material UI?

<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/11.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Bar chart: 160 x I'm just getting started!, 147 x 6 months +, 293 x 1 year +, 71 x 3 years +, 11 x Four years + – I'm a pioneer!" />

We missed a trick by not including "2 years +" here, so "1 year +" looks stacked.
The number of users of Material UI continues to grow at a steady pace, and once on board, many
developers stick with it.

### 12. What were you primarily using before Material UI?

<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/12.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Bar chart: 55% Bootstrap, 18% Custom, 12% Other, 7% Semantic-IU, 6% Materialize, 3% React Toolbox" />

Given its relative popularity, and the move from CSS / HTML / jQuery towards front-end frameworks,
it should come as no big surprise to see that the majority of respondents were previously using Bootstrap.
Custom solutions have also been replaced by Material UI as your go-to UI library, along with a
long-tail of other frameworks.

### 13. How many Material UI based projects have you built?

<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/13.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Pie chart: 10.7% I'm just getting started, 23.5% 1, 52.5% 2-5, 11.1% 6-10, 2.2% 10+" />

Over three quarters of you have built two or more projects with Material UI, with 13.3% having six
or more projects under your belt. The 2.2% with ten or more, we salute you!

## Your product

### 14. What are you building?

Multiple options were allowed.

- Dashboard & admin: 70%
- UI components (design system): 40%
- Business & corporate pages: 35%
- Landing pages (product): 33%
- e-commerce: 14%
- Portfolio & resume: 12%
- Blog: 8%

Dashboards are at the top of the heap, and we've long known that many of you are building internal
systems that can't feature in [the showcase](/material-ui/discover-more/showcase/). Let us know by opening a PR
if you're bucking that trend, and have something sparkly to share! And if you're in the 40% building UI
components, we'd be happy to give you a shout out in the [related projects](/material-ui/discover-more/related-projects/)
section.

### 15. What "delivery mechanism" are you using?

Multiple options were allowed.

- Web app (for example create react app): 92%
- Progressive web app (with service worker): 25%
- Server-side rendering 14%
- Static web site, hosted on a CDN (for example Gatsby): 13%
- Desktop app (for example Electron): 12%
- Native mobile app (for example Cordova): 6%

### 16. Who are you building it for?

<img src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/16.png" style="display: block; margin: 0 auto;" alt="Pie chart: 54,3% for my company, 24.9% for a client, 15.2% as a side project, 5.6% more than one of these." />

### 17. Which JavaScript framework are you using, if any?

Multiple options were allowed.

- Create React App: 75%
- none: 17%
- Next.js: 12%
- Gatsby: 8%

Server-side rendering isn't yet very popular.
As the React ecosystem matures, we might see a big push of server-side rendering in the coming months.

### 18. What styling system are you using?

Multiple options were allowed.

- @mui/styles: 85%
- Styled components: 30%
- Good old CSS (+sass, less, etc): 24%
- CSS Modules (+sass, less, etc): 16%
- Emotion: 4%

Traditional CSS users are still prevalent (24% + 16%).
The components customization `classes` API was designed for these people.
It's also why we allow the generation of deterministic class names (_MuiButton-root_ instead of _jss113_).

However, styled components is popular. We will work on better supporting it.

## Conclusion

This data is **incredibly valuable** for our team.
Again, thank you for participating!
We want to work on the problems that resonate the most with our users.
[It's clear](#4-how-can-we-improve-material-ui-for-you) that we should:

1. Support more components
2. Improve the customization
3. Improve the documentation
4. Improve the static typings
5. Reduce the overhead of the library

**We will update [our ROADMAP](/material-ui/discover-more/roadmap/) in the coming days**.
We will run a similar survey next year to keep track of our progress.

If you want to continue to influence our roadmap, please upvote 👍 the issues you are the most interested in on GitHub.

<video autoplay muted loop playsinline width="2914" height="1440">
  <source src="/static/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/vote.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
</video>

<p class="blog-description">Help us prioritize by upvoting.</p>