Autodesk Labs started as an unbranded, renegade outreach by
Autodesk developers to get interesting new technologies into
users hands much earlier than possible in traditional
development cycles. It even featured a Labrador Retriever as a
site mascot. The site has since been taken over by marketing --
nicely, I am told by developers -- and it has become a major
vehicle for Autodesk to generate interest around new products.
The model was perfected in 2006 with Autodesk Impression, a
non-photorealistic rendering tool for AutoCAD. Four separate
preview versions of Impression were posted over the course of a
year, as Autodesk added new features in response to user
comment. Impression is now a retail product and a “graduate” of
Autodesk Labs. Other companies using similar lab sites to sites
to promote new technology include Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and
SolidWorks.
The following is an edited version of a recent conversation I
had with Brian Mathews, Director of Autodesk Labs and the chief
architect of Autodesk’s DWF publishing and collaboration
technologies. It is his assignment at Autodesk to help define
future products, technologies, and opportunities, and to be a
technical vision evangelist both internally and externally.
What is the motivation behind Autodesk Labs?
There are several trends coming together. The first is that
over the years, I’ve noticed that a lot of technology created by
individual engineers tends to get overlooked or put on the shelf
if it isn’t created specifically for an existing product.
Another is that we need to get as much input from our users as
possible during the early stages of product development. If we
go through the typical development cycle, only a very few users
get to see a new product until we release it for beta testing.
By then it is too late to get feedback that can shape the
product.
Is that the motivation that led to the release of
Impression and Inventor LT as Lab products instead of staying
hidden until released as new products?
Yes. In the case of Autodesk Impression, it is an entirely
new product for us, and the approach is new. It isn’t like
releasing a new version of AutoCAD where there is a standard to
follow and expectations to meet. We want to get Impression right
the first time. Beta testing is a very controlled process. By
putting Impression in Labs we can get feedback early enough to
get it right by the time we are ready to test a shipping
product.
So, is Autodesk Labs just a new way to do beta testing?
It isn’t so much about testing as it is a way to get feedback
that is more general and wide ranging. Beta testing is about
products and usability; Autodesk Labs is about technologies. By
putting a technology up on Labs, we can reach early adopters who
are willing to give things a spin. The technology is the big
deal here. For example, Freewheel [for viewing DWF files in a
browser] is a technology, not a product. We are looking at some
things we can do to help with mash-ups [mixing map data with
another application], and there are other things we will post on
Labs that will never be stand-along products.
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