Once upon a time in a user experience community far, far away, user experience professionals spent their days obsessing over the need to define all the different fields that made up user experience design – which include interaction design, information design, information architecture, visual design, and user interface design. Today, something interesting is happening in that community: we’re evolving past the need to define the damned thing.

User-Centered Design.hmm.seems intuitive, doesn't it? Obviously, if we're launching something onto the World Wide Web, we must be expecting someone to use it — duh. Though this may be true, many companies are missing the mark and their audience and, consequently, their business objectives by failing to successfully integrate the user. A User-Centered Design approach can create successes by merging business and user objectives to deliver a service that users value, while generating a benefit for the business. In fact, studies show that with a User-Centered Design you could realize returns of $10 to $100 for every $1 you invest in making your site easier to use.

The other day at the local library, I was standing next to a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, as I am wont to do, sneaking drags off unfiltered Gitanes and trying simultaneously to look pained, intriguing, and authoritative. Another presumed lover of language, also standing next to the dictionary, suddenly turned and asked me to define a word for him. The word itself is not important. Puzzled and flustered — nay, incredulous — I replied, "Why don't you look it up? You're standing right next to a dictionary!"

XML looks to be a big advancement over HTML. As St. Laurent writes, "Using XML requires a different focus, demanding that designers examine the way that their documents are built rather than the way they are formatted." Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 already offers some support for XML, and Netscape 5.0 will support XML. This book is geared to the HTML developer who wants to move to the next level of web design and not wait for Microsoft or Netscape to develop the tags and style support they need. A primer rather than a complete guide to XML, this is a great starting point.