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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.