Ajax is an important development for Web applications, and its importance is only going to grow.

If you need to take a step back from day-to-day operations and plot out the long-term direction of your user experience strategy, consultants can give you a perspective you can't get on your own.

Problems with visual design can turn users off so quickly that they never discover all the smart choices you made with navigation or interaction design.

The more everybody knows about all aspects of the problems we face, the better off all of us will be. Less time spent explaining things means more time for coming up with creative solutions.

I'm not sure that you can say definitively that some roles are better filled by consultants, but I would say that some projects are better handled by consultants.

A good designer can create a design that accommodates all the constraints and still delivers an elegant, satisfying experience to the user. A great designer can go beyond this and create a design that demonstrates that some of those constraints weren’t really there to begin with.

Giving something your time isn't the same as giving it your attention.