Scott Berkun, "Strategies of influence in interaction design," UIWeb.com, Nov 2001

A prototype of your new search page design reflects a set of design choices you think should be made. But what are the business impacts of those choices? How long will it take to build? How will it effect advertising rates, or partnerships? What code changes are needed to make it possible? In the abstract, some designers feel these are not design considerations, and instead are just matters of implementation for someone else to figure out. This is a trap. While it’s great to ignore constraints to inspire creative thinking, if your want your work to reach people’s web browsers or desktops, you have to plan to involve yourself in the practicalities of realizing your ideas. The more skilled you are at assessing those aspects of a design, the more welcome you’ll be to participate in the process.
....
The two most powerful forces of influence in the interaction designers toolbox are the video and the prototype. Humans are visceral creatures. We respond to things that call on our senses. Specs, code, and even bitmaps are all static, limited attempts to represent what the experience of interaction will be like. It takes an inventive imagination to read these things and accurately visualize anything. It’s typically only those few individuals with practiced imaginations, regardless of job title, that can do this well. If you need to convince someone that the current design has problems, you must show them... If you want to get people’s attention around your work and the user experience, there is no better way.

The prototype offers you another form of direct influence. It’s almost a secret weapon. While everyone in the room is debating in front of the whiteboard about what the design should be, or how it should behave, you can show the group a real live working example of your ideas . They can even interact with it depending on what you’ve done. It’s a huge advantage.

Walter Mossberg, "Consumer Technologies Make Startling Advances in Decade," The Wall Street Journal, 25 Oct 2001

... it's amazing how much better things are than they were just a decade ago. It seems like 100 years have passed, not just 10. Yet, some things haven't changed. The techie class that designs and sells these products still tends to make them too complicated and still looks down on average consumers, at least privately. The buying experience is still terrible. And in some ways, at least when it comes to the personal computer, consumers actually have less choice than they did in 1991.

Marcia Conner, "Our Shared Playground: An Interview with Michael Schrage," LiNE Zine, Winter 2001

...in researching the histories of disciplines like biotech and software development for the book, what I really found at the core of innovation weren't only creative individuals, per se, but rather creative relationships. Intriguingly, the key medium for managing those creative and innovative relationships was the shared space. I found that all collaboration, without exception, requires shared space.

"Making the World a Happier Place, One Web Site at a Time: Interview with Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir," WebReference.com, Oct 2001

At the same time, to get high quality design, you must have usability-directed design where you start out with studying users' needs and let that decide where you're going to go. That more integrated approach, where usability permeates throughout the lifecycle and becomes the way a company designs interfaces, I would say that is exceedingly rare. Basically, it almost never happens that way. I recommend that is the direction things should move because whenever products or websites are designed that way, they become so dramatically superior that they take over and gain some substantial market shares. So it's self-perpetuating.

Dan Bricklin, "Copy Protection Robs The Future, Bricklin.com, Oct 2001

Copy protection will break the chain of formal and informal archivists who are necessary to the long-term preservation of creative works.