I’m Jacob Lauemøller and I’m the founder and owner of Iteray aps — my freelance consulting business. I can help you develop great web applications that are easy to pick up and hard to put down.

I believe the user interface is the application. Yes, you need a great backend built for performance and rock solid day-to-day operation. Yes, you need an application that doesn’t cost a fortune to maintain or expand. And of course you want everything to be standards compliant! Who doesn’t? But all of that will mean absolutely nothing if your users are running away screaming.

More than 10 years of developing applications for the desktop and the web has taught me an important lesson: good interaction design and a user interface that goes the extra mile to assist the user in his or her primary goal — carrying out actual tasks, not twisting the arms of the application — is everything. Fail at that, and nobody will care just how fantastic your server is.

As it happens, creating applications with great user interfaces on solid backends isn’t easy. Choices made along the way will have to change. Some features probably won’t make it past their initial encounter with real users. And some that nobody thought of when the application was just a whiteboard dream will suddenly be the ones you can’t live without.

We need processes and tools that are agile enough to facilitate, even encourage, change throughout the project. Not chaotic, uncontrolled, panic driven change. But carefully thought out course corrections at well defined moments. That’s why I promote and use agile development methods like Scrum and eXtreme Programming and fantastic tools such as Ruby on Rails.