Acknowledgments

This book has been a true labor of love, and we are grateful for the support from everyone who helped us pull it all together.

First, we’d like to thank Meg Dunkerley and Heather Scherer from Morgan Kaufmann for your hard work, direction, and patience. We are especially grateful for the amazing feedback provided by our reviewers, Mary Beth Rettger, Whitney Quesenbery, and Chauncey Wilson. Thank you for combing the manuscript thoroughly with your expert lens and delivering helpful feedback with such sharp wit.

Thank you to our Survival Story contributors for giving us and the readers some entertaining and interesting outside perspectives to sprinkle throughout the book.

Our book cover and spine art looks as good as it does thanks to the mad talent of Karen LeDuc and Matt Kanaracus at Codesign, Boston. Thanks also to Mark Ainscow for your brilliant photography skills and responsiveness to our frenzied requests. Thanks also to our photography models, Reeve Goodenough and Deirdre McGruder.

We have infinite gratitude for our very talented filmmaker, Chris Portal. We can’t thank you enough for volunteering dozens of hours of your time and immense talent to prepare, film, edit, and produce the companion videos to this book. (If anyone wants to admire Chris’ other work, go to http://www.chrisportal.com/.) We have equally large amounts of thanks for our talented “sound guy,” Dennis Ganz. We will miss working with both of you—and always remember our 12-hour filming days filled with boom mics and pocket dollies, inordinate amounts of coffee, and the “Harlem Shake.”

Thanks also to our numerous actors: Mark Ainscow, Gary Aussant, Margy Bergel, Laura Bowden, Reeve Goodenough, Jeff Goodwin, Cory Madaris, Ellen Mangan, Deirdre McGruder, Lauren Mckenzie, Susan Mercer, Debra Reich, Dorienne Rosenberg, Scott Williams, and David Wong. We appreciate you volunteering so much of your time to help us refine the scripts, rehearse, and finally film (for hours on end). You did a great job and kept us laughing (with you, not at you). And, of course, big thanks to the User Experience Center at Bentley University for generously allowing us to film in and around their space.

Thank you to everyone in the user research community who provided inspiration and feedback as we pulled this together, especially those in the Boston area who joined us for our workshops and guest teaching gigs. Your enthusiasm helped us refine our message and kept us going through the hardest times.

Finally, we want to thank others who we pulled in for advice and reviews of various materials: Gina Ackeifi, Steve Borowick, Lena Dmitrieva, Elizabeth Goldman, Penny Gronbeck, David Kaplan, Samantha Louras, Stephen Reinach, Elizabeth Rosenzweig, and Tomer Sharon. You all are the best.