Throughout the process of putting this book together, one thing that became clear to me was that curating an effective body of work like this is much easier imagined than done. This book is the result of many individuals who have encouraged, influenced, and contributed.

There are quite a few people to acknowledge in this journey, and I would like to recognize a few of them.

THE SYSTEM

Foremost. I would like to acknowledge my cofounder (and brother) Prasad Kantamneni, without whom UXReactor would just have been a pipe dream. A little more than 20 years ago he was the first person to introduce me to a nascent field of study called human factors. Both of us eventually earned graduate degrees in the discipline, and it transformed us into human‐centered problem solvers.

In addition, there’s the awesome team at UXReactor, which has steadily grown to more than 60 practitioners across three continents. It’s not uncommon to hear phrases such as, “Is there a play for this?” or “We should write this as a play” in the team’s day‐to‐day conversation. The plays shared in this book have been created, tested, and evolved through the team’s constant pursuit of improvement in all aspects of our practice. I would like to acknowledge the leadership team of Vinay Draksharam, Kalyan Gummadi, Jamie Yoo, Sarah Khalid, Elinor Chang, and Camilo Rendon Gomez, who on a daily basis direct key aspects of the people, process, mindset, and environment at the firm.

It would not have been possible for the Playbook to evolve and strengthen over the past seven years without the lessons we’ve learned through our dynamic collaboration with our client‐partners. Their belief in our philosophy and process has been our pillar of strength. I would like to thank Kurt Van Etten at RedSeal; Guru Sankararaman and Jay Vijayan at Tekion; Nabil Bukhari, Carla Guzzeti, and Shyam Pullela at Extreme Networks; Randy Sieffert, Amy Lokey, and their team at ServiceNow; Lewis Black and his leadership team at Actian; Greg Petroff and his team at Compass; Rizwan Pirani and his team at DataCore; Steven Miller at 8x8; Michael Homeier and Barry Hill at Nokia; and Balaji Parimi at CloudKnox/CloudPhysics.

THE BOOK

The process of producing this book involved support from quite a few contributors that I would like to acknowledge.

Apart from the core contributing team listed in the previous section (“The Players Behind the Playbook”) I would also like to acknowledge my teammates Grace Ang and Padmaja Maddala, who spent significant time contributing to and reviewing this book.

We were also fortunate to have some very capable volunteers, representing the various personas this book was written for, reviewing and providing feedback in true user‐first fashion. I would like to acknowledge Lalatendu Satpathy, Kelly Patchet, Uday Gajendar, Justin Hou, Mukul Bhist, Kate Vyvial, Saibaba Attelli, Wendy Kastner, Nithya Lakshmanan, Kurt Van Etten, Steve Venkateshan, Sridhar Machiroutu, and Peter Wohlsen for their effective and timely feedback.

This book went through multiple iterations and it is a much better product because of the editorial support we got throughout this process. Foremost to acknowledge is Richard Narramore from Wiley, who first believed in publishing a book that focused on the power of user experience design fueling business growth and subsequently set the initial structure and narrative. I would also like to acknowledge Emily Moberg Robinson and Bryn Mooth, who spent significant time editing and providing feedback to improve this book.

Finally, achieving the ambitious goal of having a highly visual finished product would not have been possible without the awesome illustration skills of Dario Bolivar and layout skills of my teammate Diana Sánchez.

THE FOUNDATION

On a personal front, this book is a result of my decades of experience in various environments and situations that directly influenced my philosophy, mindset, and passion for driving business value through design.

I would like to acknowledge Dr. Sundaram Narayanan and Dr. Ray Rothrock, who nurtured my inquisitiveness during my graduate studies at Wright State University; Dr. Nuray Aykin who was my first non‐academic manager at Siemens (to a naive intern); Chris Rockwell at Lextant, who gave me my first opportunity to be a full‐time teammate and nurtured me to think in a system‐thinking way; Darren Beyer at Wildcard Systems (FIS), who created an environment for me to dabble in product management; Corey Bernardo and KC Teis for enabling my transition into design leadership at Pay‐Pal; Catherine Courage for providing me the support and empowerment to build design teams at scale at Citrix; and Dasaradha Gude, who helped mentor us in our early days of UXReactor.

I would also like to acknowledge the awesome faculty of the General Management Program at Harvard Business School, who have deeply influenced and enabled my business acumen.

My late father Col. KLK Prasad (Ret’d.) who as an officer in the Indian Army exposed me to the soldier’s ethos of esprit‐de‐corps and always leading from the front.

Last but not least I would like to acknowledge my dear mother Ratna Kantamneni, who helped instill in both Prasad and me the fundamental philosophy of pursuing what we believe is right in life and not focusing too much on the fruits of labor. Without this philosophy we would not have taken the path of delayed gratification by leveraging UXReactor to finesse and evolve the Playbook.