The Michigan User Experience Professionals Association (MI UXPA) is a chapter of the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA).
What do we do?
- Promote and support the principles of usability and user-centered design in products, software, and websites for Michigan companies.
- Bring user interface designers, usability engineers, human factors engineers, and more together to network and learn.
- Organize and hold events on topics of interest to our members. Events may be a formal presentation or workshop on a usability-related topic.
Who are our members?
Our members are people whose jobs and/or interests are the design and optimization of product user interfaces and website user experiences. They include:
- user experience professionals
- interaction designers
- information architects
- accessibility specialists
- content strategists
- business analysts
- human factors engineers
- industrial engineers
- graphic designers
- web developers
- software developers
- technical communicators
We’re a fascinating and diverse group of professionals who help Michigan companies better match business needs with customer/end-user needs
Do you have to join the international UXPA?
Everyone is welcome to join our mailing list for free and find out about Michigan UXPA events, and our events are open to everyone that would like to come.
We encourage membership in UXPA International because of all of the additional benefits (you can learn more at on the UXPA website). UXPA membership gives you discounts to our meetings and allows you to vote in our chapter elections and the opportunity to be an officer and help shape and drive the chapter.
Where do we meet?
To keep the chapter as convenient as possible to all members, we alternate our meeting locations between metro Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, and Grand Rapids. We recognize that Michigan is a big place and we want to provide members with variety in our meeting locations.
We typically hold our meetings at local companies that offer to host them. A growing list of companies and universities that have hosted are events includes:
- Alticor
- Compuware
- Michigan State University
- Perficient
- Proquest
- Quicken Loans
- Soar Technologies
- TecEd
- Techsmith
- Thomson Gale
- University of Michigan
- Washtenaw Community College
Hosting our events at various local companies offers benefits all around:
- For the Michigan UXPA, it allows us to continue to run this organization on a tiny budget
- For event attendees, it keeps the event price very low, and it allows them to visit different companies in the state
- For the companies who host, it provides a convenient venue for their employees (right outside their office) and it also gives them an opportunity to promote their company and the products they sell
Please help us to maintain this interesting mix and mobility by considering hosting an upcoming event. Contact us for more information.
Who is on our Board?
Keith Instone
Keith is a user experience consultant in Toledo, Ohio. He has been involved in the Michigan-Ohio UX community since the days of MOCHI (1998), and inter/nationally with ACM SIGCHI, UPA/World Usability Day, UXnet, and the IA Institute. He got his start doing HCI research at BGSU, was part of Argus Associates, and worked at IBM for a decade.
If you have worked with Keith over the years, contact him to catch up on old times and talk about some sort of partnership with Michigan UXPA. If you have never met Keith, contact him anyway.
Sarah Swierenga
Sarah joined Michigan U(X)PA as soon as she moved to Michigan and started her job as Director of Michigan State University, Usability/Accessibility Research and Consulting (MSU UARC), in August 2004. Her professional passion is managing UX research projects that include individuals with disabilities to get authentic voices embedded in the design process. Personally, she loves to travel, visit her precious grandkids, and everything water.
Mike Wojan
Mike is a Senior Product Designer at Duo Security here in Ann Arbor. As a U-M graduate specializing in Informatics, he is passionate about designing intuitive and delightful customer experiences. He has learned so much from the talented UX professionals across our state so he enjoys volunteering with MiUXPA to better connect to one other.
Ali Saleh
Ali is a Product Owner at Ford Smart Mobility helping Ford build vehicle data products and services. He is very passionate about UX simply because it brings a lot of meaning and value to anything we create. Outside of work, he enjoys traveling, volunteering and playing various sports and has been fortunate to visit more than 25 countries.
Katie Oeschger
Katie came to UX from a strong research background in behavior analysis. She is an optimistic, big thinker who’s driven to deeply understanding user behaviors and motivations to solve tough problems and challenges. Katie is a part of the Covenant Eyes team in Owosso, MI as a design researcher. She enjoys reading, photography, and visiting zoos.
Kaileigh Hermann
Our MiUXPA intern is Kaileigh Hermann, an Experience Architecture and Graphic Design student at MSU, graduating in December 2021. Kaileigh is passionate about all things design-related and hopes to use her skills to help build experiences that are inclusive and empowering to all. She is very excited to work with the MiUXPA team and would like to thank them for this opportunity to learn.
Michigan UXPA 