One of our goals is to increase awareness within our community of all of the amazing UX and design events and development opportunities in Michigan, and this newsletter is just one way we’d like to do that (aka people share cool activities with us and we want you to also be in the know!).

We’d love your feedback on what else you’d like to see in your inbox in the future!

Upcoming Registration & Speaker Deadlines

Enterprise Experience 2019
June 3-5, 2019 – San Francisco, CA
Submission Deadline – February 10

National Society of Black Engineers
March 27-31, 2019 – Detroit, MI
Deadline for Registration – February 28

EPIC2019
November 9-12, 2019 – Providence, RI
Submission Deadline – April 12

UX Events around Michigan

Southeast Michigan

AIGA Detroit Community Meeting
February 5 – Detroit

Michigan Automotive & Mobility UX Meetup 
February 7 – Novi

Detroit Month of Design Info Session
February 12 – Detroit

Motor City Auto Jam
February 22-24 – Detroit

World Information Architecture Day
February 23 – Ann Arbor

Detroit Month of Design Info Session
February 23 – Detroit

For the Love of UX – Food, Networking and Arcade Games!*
February 27 – Detroit
*Sponsored by Michigan UXPA

Ignite UX Michigan*
March 19 – Ann Arbor
*Michigan UXPA Partner

Detroit UX Happy Spring! Let’s Prototype (for a Cause)!
March 20 – Detroit

Car HMI USA
April 29-30 – Detroit

Mid-Michigan

Lansing Experience Design UX Monthly
February 13 – Okemos

Lansing Experience Design UX Casual 
February 27 – TBD

Lansing Experience Design UX Monthly
March 13 – Okemos

Lansing Experience Design UX Casual
March 24 – TBD

West Michigan

AIGA West Michigan Membership meeting
February 11 – Grand Rapids

Meetaway: UX Designers helping UX Designers
February 12 – Kalamazoo

Contact Us

Did we miss something? Is there an amazing event or group that we should include for next month? Let us know!

Email:  michiganuxpa@gmail.com
Twitter: @MichiganUXPA

Join Michigan UXPA, and the rest of the world, on Thursday, November 8, for World Usability Day. This year’s global theme is “Design for Good or Evil.”

We have partnered with Michigan State University (MSU) Usability/Accessibility Research and Consulting (UARC) and AIGA Detroit for two special World Usability Day events in service of our Michigan community.

Morning: Michigan State University, East Lansing

MSU UARC has hosted a conference all 14 years of World Usability Day’s existence! They have another fantastic line up of presentations:

• Planning for Usability, Peter Morville, Semantic Studios
• Designing our Future(s), Erik Dahl, Erik Dahl Design Company
• Understanding the User Experience Behind the New WCAG 2.1 Requirements, Shawn Henry, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative
• Designing an Accessible Personal Health Record, Jason Withrow, Washtenaw Community College
• How to Talk to Engineers about Usability, Dawn Opel, Michigan State University

The conference runs from 8:30am to Noon in the MSU Union, with an optional tour of MSU UARC from 1:15-3pm in the Kellogg Center.

Check out the MSU event web page as additional information becomes available.

Registration is now open. Cost is $25: a bargain for a conference that has become a pillar of our community.

Evening: College for Creative Studies, Detroit

AIGA Detroit is hosting its first World Usability Day event in the evening, at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Doors open at 6:30pm.

At “Ethics of UX Design”, you will learn ethical principles that apply to user experience design, hear examples from everyday practice, and get some practical tips on how to design user interfaces that follow ethical principles. The speakers will be:

• Michael Beasley, UX Designer, Amazon
• Jack Nank, Digital Producer, Threespot
• Amy Michelle DeBaets, PhD, Assistant Professor, OUWB School of Medicine (Oakland University)

Learn more at AIGA Detroit’s event page.

Registration at Eventbrite is available. Tickets are $10 plus a service fee. Also a great deal for an evening of discussion about such an important topic.

We hope to see you in East Lansing or Detroit (or both) on November 8th to celebrate World Usability Day with Michigan UXPA.

We had a great Detroit Month of Design event on September 6th: our sold-out Architecture Walk & Experience Design Tour!

Fifty people started out meeting each other and having a great lunch at the Detroit Opera House’s Cadillac Cafe.

One group toured the opera house, learning about theater design & architecture, acting, directing, costumes, makeup, and more. A few examples of the topics covered:

• How a theater building itself contributes to the user experience of a show
• How the type of stage affects set design, directing, and acting
• How a director anticipates and solves problems on behalf of the audience
• Accessibility issues related to lighting and sound
• The “best seat in the house”: it depends
• How the rehearsal process parallels the UX development process

Dan Brinker, Technical Director of the DOH, and Larry Rusinsky led the discussion. Larry posted pictures and comments on Facebook.

Dan Klyn led the architecture walk around parts of downtown Detroit. Discussion examples:

• Boundaries, contributing to certainty or ambiguity
• Pace layers, the uneven application of governance
• Spatial primitives, geometric shapes and light
• Good fit, emerging form in response to new forces
• Channels, connectivity between touchpoints

Dan has shared pictures of the key stops on the walk and his discussion guides.

Thanks to many individuals and organizations who helped make this happen! Dan Klyn & Larry Rusinsky, Michigan Opera Theater, Dexterity UX & The Understanding Group, and Design Core Detroit.