well, in this case i've only met them from my role as a ui designer who's been called in because of a need for ui design. that said - you're very right - given

well, in this case i've only met them from my role as a ui designer who's been called in because of a need for ui design. that said - you're very right - given the circumstances, they were the closest position to a ui designer that these companies had. and they do tend to think more about the users than most other roles. their focus was though was on a traffic funnel with a rhythm dictated by crawlers, not the all of general interest. in companies with a strong editorial culture, these people are closer to the literal language of a site & copywriting than us diagrammers. they care about interaction design, but only as long as it's not annoying & isn't something the crawlers would have a problem with. i can't imagine it working in smaller companies with the same dynamics, nor do i think it would work well as a consultancy - but it some cases, it fits the given context extremely well.