Preface I met Tim Bosenick, the managing director of the German usability firm SirValUse, in 2003 over dinner in Chicago. He was in the United States with his client, a Japanese usability consulting firm, and their end-client, a large electronics firm, to test the inter- face of a piece of office equipment. During dinner, we talked about global user research projects and the layers of complexity that make them especially interesting and chal- lenging. This discussion was the seed that germinated into this book. As consultants in user experience research, my collaborators and I have seen an increas- ing percentage of work dedicated to global usability during the past few years. Our dis- cussions with others in the field have revealed that practitioners could benefit from sharing their experiences and methods for conducting quality global research with their global colleagues. The purpose of this book is to impart practical, no-nonsense informa- tion on global user experience research from a number of knowledgeable sources from throughout the world, each drawing on a broad range of experiences. As with any sort of large-scale undertaking, global user experience research presents its