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.

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.

But the best teams I've encountered have one important thing in common: their team structure and processes cover a full range of distinct competencies necessary for success.

My job involves a lot of different skills now - I'm as much entrepreneur and management consultant as anything else these days - but IA is still my favorite part of the work I do.

Building technical systems involves a lot of hard work and specialized knowledge: languages and protocols, coding and debugging, testing and refactoring.

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.

Also, if nothing else, writing this book has really changed the way I experience bookstores. I have a whole different appreciation for the amount of work packed into even the slimmest volume on the shelves.