This book is a manifestation of a career’s worth of passion for applied robotics in product design, which has grown from my connection with the thoughtful and generous people who explored this fascination with me.

Particular gratitude goes to the brilliant and prescient interaction design guru Dr. Wendy Ju, who totally gets me, and was game to mind meld on this content with me for the past few years. THANK YOU!

I am forever indebted to Andrea Thomaz, who opened my eyes to this vast new frontier of social robotics when the field was in its infancy over a decade ago. Thank you, too, for the opportunity to work with the richly talented team of researchers, engineers, and software innovators at Diligent Robotics, including Vivian Chu, Agata Rozga, Alfredo Serrato, Peter Worsnop, and Phaidra Harper.

Thanks also to the interviewees for this project who took the time to share a glimpse into their wonderful worlds of work in this arena: Jonathan Foster, Doug Dooley, Rocky Jacob, Joshua Walton, Dan Grollman, Dor Skuler, Gimmy Chu, and the folks at Nanoleaf.

Thank you to Tom Guarriello, my cohost and founder of the RoboPsych podcast, for inviting me along on the ongoing journey that is our biweekly discussion around humanity’s collective hopes, fears, and wildest dreams about AI and robotics in our everyday lives.

A big shout-out goes to Mike Kuniavsky and the profoundly inspirational Sketching in Hardware community, on which I have always been able to lean for the bleeding-edge advice on seemingly anything at all. Particular thanks goes to Joshua Walton (yes, again), James Tichenor, Noah Feehan, Jason Kridner, Tod Kurt, Leah McKibbin, Michael Shiloh, Justin Bakse, Vanessa Carpenter, Alicia Gibb, Nathan Seidle, Matt Cottam, Mark D. Gross, Nikolas Martelaro, Carlyn Maw, and Sophia Brueckner.

Thank you to the bright and empathic minds who inspired and supported me on so many wonderful design projects at Smart Design, including Dan Formosa, Davin Stowell, Ted Booth, Shruti Chandra, Jeff Hoefs, Hideaki Matsui, Blake McEldowney, Marc Morros, Marc-Aurélien Vivant, and Anthony DiBitonto. And thank you to Ted Ullrich and Pepin Gelardi of Tomorrow Lab, for sharing space, time, and ideas around the design and development of smart objects.

Thanks to all my students, past and present, who have challenged me just as much as I have (hopefully) challenged them. This includes undergraduate and graduate students from Parsons School of Design’s Product Design and Industrial Design programs; University of Pennsylvania’s Integrated Product Design program; School of Visual Art’s Products of Design and MFA IxD programs; Georgia Tech’s Industrial Design program; Drexel’s Product Design program; and the Interactive and Interaction Design programs at the Savannah College of Art and Design. And I offer particular thanks to my inaugural class at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the pioneers who took the risk of signing up for the new and uncharted territory that we call “4D Design”: Michael Candy, Zhuo Chen, Steve Kuypers, Jerry Li, and 4D’s “patient zero,” the fabulous Caroline DelGiudice.

Thank you to my amazing, supportive colleagues at those same institutions, particularly Sarah Rottenberg, Allan Chochinov, Liz Danzico, Steven Heller, Rama Chorpash, Dan Michalik, Dave Marin, Emilie Baltz, Sarah Rottenberg, Peter Bressler, David Robertson, Mike Glaser, and Rahul Mangharam.

Ongoing thanks go to the tireless team at Cranbrook Academy of Art, including Susan Ewing, Chris Scoates, Julianne Montgomery, Vanessa Lucero-Mazei, Elizabeth Dizik, Julie Fracker, Mike Paradise, and all my fellow AiRs.

Thanks to my past interns, apprentices, and student collaborators, Laeticia Mabilais Estevez, Alexa Forney, Erik Stefans, Alicia Siman, Matthew O’Kelly, Vincent Pacelli, Kuk Jang, Caroline Brustowicz, and Aisen Chacin.

Special thanks to Lynn Johnston, my friend and agent, for all her ideas, advice, and support for this project.

I’m indebted to all the folks at Harvard Business Review Press, including Jeff Kehoe, Melinda Merino, Julie Devoll, Alicyn Zall, Stephani Finks, and the whole HBR team. Thanks also to Angela Piliouras of Westchester Publishing Services.

Thank you to the super-talented Nicholas Lim for his expressive and precise visual design and illustration work.

Thanks to Darcy Skye for her compassionate insight.

Thank you to my besties, Bernadette, Melissa, Patty, Molly, Alexandra, Julie, Joe and Steve, and to the magnanimous, razor-sharp, and always-there-for-me Sally Kaplan.

And, of course, the biggest thank you of all goes to Mom and Dad.