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.

At Adaptive Path, we've been doing our own work with Ajax over the last several months, and we're realizing we've only scratched the surface of the rich interaction and responsiveness that Ajax applications can provide.

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.

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.

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.

Ajax isn't a technology. It's really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways.

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.