Good design, when done well, should be invisible.

The process of design starts with exploration, but ends with refinement. The best designers carefully move from one to the other, making sure they spend enough time exploring before locking themselves into a design approach.

Some people are so into web standards that they've removed all the tables from their houses

Users scan a page looking for trigger words. If they find a trigger word, they click on it but if they don’t find it, they go to search. That’s the way it works on 99% of sites, although Amazon is an exception. That’s because Amazon has done a great job of training users to know that absolutely nothing on the home page is of any use.

Once you eliminate quality as a requirement, the entire design process becomes a whole lot easier.

Good design, when done well, should be invisible.

The poster child of Web 2.0 is Flickr.com. Personalization is a key piece of Web 2.0.