Finding design teams is never an easy job. Designers, after all, are nothing if not busy — too busy to spend a lot of time hanging around the virtual water cooler, looking for surveys to take. And organizations tend to protect the identities of their designers. They don't want them distracted and, OK, to be frank, they don't want them recruited. So gathering data on design teams turns into a search for people who are rare, well-concealed and too busy to talk for long.

That is where an industry publication comes into the picture. EE Times, its sister publications and Web sites reach the vast majority of the practicing electronics designers in North America. Our publications and lists can be an effective way of getting the message out that we are looking for data.

But that's only a part of the problem. We can get the message out, but who will respond? That's where the very special nature of the engineering community comes into play. We have found over the years that when engineers are being asked intelligent questions on issues they care about, they will try to help. Perhaps it's love of talking shop. Maybe it's personal commitment to advancing the profession. Or possibly it has something to do with the longstanding relationship that exists between EE Times and its readers. But the numbers are clear: When we ask for help, readers respond.

And it's no small sacrifice. The questionnaire for the "Choosing the Right Silicon Solution" survey, depending on which branches you followed, could run close to 30 questions. Some of these were in multiple parts, and few of them were simple to answer. So we know that respondents spent some serious time providing data for us. We appreciate it.

In addition to promoting the survey in print and on our various Web sites, we sent e-mail messages to qualified subscribers of EE Times and Embedded Systems Programming — only to those who had opted in for e-mail, of course. This series of print and e-mail messages permitted us to draw from a cross-section of the readership of key print and Web publications serving the design community. Because the publications and sites used are not narrowly focused, we were able to avoid biasing the survey by pulling data from only particular application areas, industry segments or professional specialties. What we ended up with was indeed a fair sampling of design teams across the North American industry.

The questionnaire itself was a Web-based, self-branching study. In other words, the questions offered depended to some degree on the responses given. This technique permits us to simultaneously study a wide, diverse population and dig deeply into particular areas of interest. It also minimizes the number of questions any one respondent has to deal with.

The Web survey was active for one week in July. We logged more than 400 completed surveys, giving us excellent accuracy on overall industry statistics. More importantly, major industries, design team sizes, application areas and design styles were all well-represented, so we are able to make statistically useful statements about some rather detailed subjects — how particular kinds of design teams work, and what they do.

But while it's important to have a broad and large sample, it's also important to have a sample of the correct population. Our study is of the behavior of design teams that are working on complex, highly integrated systems. So we filtered our respondents according to a number of criteria. We required them to be designers, architects or managers of these functions. We further restricted the study to people actively engaged in the design of the kinds of systems we were interested in, and required that those people have recent experience with ASICs, large FPGAs or complex standard-product ICs.

The study was designed and conducted by longtime EE Times contractor Beacon Technology Partners (Maynard, Mass.), and we thank them for their excellent work.

But, primarily, we thank you, the respondents, for the time and effort you put in. We believe this data really will advance the cause of the design community.