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.

Effective communication is a key factor in the success of your product.

Google is making a huge investment in developing the Ajax approach.

User-centered design means understanding what your users need, how they think, and how they behave - and incorporating that understanding into every aspect of your process.

A journalist and an information architect face exactly the same problem - how to give shape to the pile of information in front of you in a way that will make it easy and natural for people to comprehend. I can't imagine any better preparation for the work I do now.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

But despite the universality of URLs, we often forget that they're not just a handy way to address network resources. They're also valuable communication tools.

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.