In the early days of the web, "e-mail the Webmaster" was found at the bottom of most web pages. With the dotcom bust and subsequent rebuilding, "Webmaster" was traded in for more "marketing friendly" e-mail addresses like "report_a_problem" or "give us feedback." Although the actual term "Webmaster" has lost steam, the role of this "mysterious" person found at the footer of pages is more important than ever.

Ten years of managing the design process has taught me a few key ideas. Here is a short list of the ways I've seen designers lose their value in a project and suggestions for how to get energy flowing and work your way out of it.

If you're lucky enough to make money with a business on the web, you'll have a lot less people to thank than you think. A good rule of thumb is that a small number of your customers will generate the large majority of your revenue. Consequently, the large majority of your customers won't ever really care about you that much.

There's a good chance you're already familiar with this as the "80/20 Rule", an idea credited to an early 20th century French-Italian polymath named Vilfredo Pareto. An expert in sociology, economics and philosophy, Pareto made a famous observation in 1906 that 80% of the property in Italy was owned by only 20% of the people. Over the past century this idea has stuck and become influential in a number of different fields of study. In the software world Quality Assurance engineers use it to chart service issues by severity, noting which ones are taking up the most of their resources. Mixing economics with sports, UC Bakersfield professor David Berri analyzes box score data to describe basketball, pointing out that 80% of a team's wins can be attributed to 20% of its roster (i.e. three guys on a roster of 15). In both cases a wealth of data often points to the same general 80/20 rule.

Design isn't about creating elements in a screen- it's about solving user problems. And anytime there's a design decision for a user, there's sure to be an argument. Here are eleven ideas for winning the design battle.