The usability risk

The article has two basic premises: why good user interface design matters more for e-commerce than for most online endeavors; and why-despite lots of corporate head-nodding and murmurs of assent-it's still very hard to achieve. The author is working on an e-commerce "wallet" project and struggling with two UI issues. One is minor, the type of wrangle designers and engineers bicker over daily. The second is both more serious and discouraging because it involves institutional change; in this case, the relinquishing of an historical artifact by a large Internet browser.