msomers

I believe the distinction here is between "contractor" or "staff augmentation" and "consultant." A contractor gets hired to practice his craft, while a consultant (theoretically) leaves a company better than when they first arrived.

This involves things like leading meetings to get buy in across groups, developing plans for what needs to be built, etc. It's very far from sitting behind your screen in Photoshop all day.

One of the best books I've read to understand what a consultant truly does is [Getting Naked](http://j.mp/1mAnhnn).

Good point, and that might be something to point out. What types of issues have you experienced in the past that you couldn't have blanket predicted beforehand?

Thanks for the input! I've been debating the merits of minifying HTML, CSS, and JS. I learned about all three of those extensively by exploring others' code. Minifying breaks that. How do you address that issue?

It's not about being upset, it's about the view that they are losing their edge in building new, interesting stuff. They are not solving user problems, they're just copycat products.

To become a long-lasting company, you have to be able to build the "next big thing".

Completely agree, and I think that's most people's sentiment. Dropbox has solved my problem enough that 5% improvement isn't worth the time of checking it out.

I'm not an IA or designer by trade at all (Degree in Finance, work in Marketing), and I found that Keynote Kung Fu was incredibly accessible by almost anyone (myself included). I had poked around in OmniGraffle before, but KNKF was just so much easier to use, especially for whipping up quick visual examples of things I want to show.

True that the final product is more styled, but that's when you have to work closely with the designer to make sure they understand you're not implying that's what the final visual style needs to look like.

I've also used KNKF for doing mockups for usability testing, which works very well.