Category: MiUXPA Events

Does the thought of getting up in front of an audience and giving a talk interest you? This is your opportunity! Ignite UX Michigan is looking for speakers.

Ignite UX Michigan is a single evening of 16 talks in the Ignite format: 5 minutes and 20 slides. This format means that the talks will have to be lively and to-the-point—a perfect opportunity to practice your skills if you are new to speaking or to gather your thoughts about a UX-related topic that’s been on your mind. It will be held at Conor O’Neill’s Irish Pub & Restaurant in Ann Arbor on October 24, 2013.

Topics can be anything that fit broadly into user experience, including topics related to information architecture, usability, user research, web analytics, UX strategy, and more. Although speakers are encouraged to have fun, talks should have an underlying serious or thought-provoking message.

To submit a talk, please send the following to ignite at user-experience.org:

• The title of your talk
• A 140 character description of what your talk is about

The deadline is September 12th. Talks will be selected by a panel of volunteers (and to volunteer, please contact ignite at user-experience.org).

Michigan UPA is proud to be a partner in organizing Ignite UX Michigan.

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Caitlin Potts

Midwest Collaborative for Library Services, 1407 Rensen Street, Lansing, MI 48910
Tuesday, June 11, 6pm

Meetings are not a waste of time.

There, I said it.

Okay, but they CAN be, right? Believe me, I’ve been in them, myself. However, in the well-over 1000 hours I’ve spent attending and facilitating meetings, I’ve learned something. Meetings are not a waste of time. Poorly planned meetings with unclear goals and a lack of shared expectations are. So, how do we stop warming chairs in our conference rooms and start having productive meetings and, I dare say, conversations?

In this talk, I’ll share the nuggets of information that I’ve gleaned over the last 3.5 years of meeting facilitation. These nuggets include how to recognize and prepare for various categories of meetings, why Edward Tufte is my facilitation hero, and how information architecture concepts will help you run a better meeting (and have better conversations).

Whether you’re a new usability professional, a jaded meeting attender, or just, well…human, you will be able to take away concepts from this talk that will help you have better conversations, and overall understanding of human communication (which is pretty important for effective meetings).

About Our Speaker

Caitlin Potts is a user experience practitioner (designer and researcher) at Covenant Eyes, Inc., in Owosso. Working as part of an agile team, she spends her time collaborating with product owners, stakeholders, and developers to design web, mobile, and client application interfaces. She offers her services as a sounding board or sympathetic ear, on a daily basis, and is facilitating the creation of business rules for Covenant Eyes.

She is passionate about understanding human behavior and using that knowledge to craft opportunities for effective communication. She also loves ampersands, great coffee, idea sharing, and her Sharpie collection (63 and counting!).

When

Tuesday, June 11, 6pm
6:00 PM — Networking
6:30 PM — Announcements
6:45 PM — Speaker
8:00 PM — Wrap up and more networking

Location

Midwest Collaborative for Library Services, 1407 Rensen Street, Lansing, MI 48910

Google Map

Cost

Current students $5
Usability Professionals’ Association members $10
All others $20

Michigan UPA thanks Covenant Eyes for sponsoring refreshments for this event.

Register

Register online at Guestlist so we know who’s coming and how to plan for refreshments. We’ll also take payment (cash or check) at the door. Questions? Email events {at} michiganupa dot org.

JSTOR, 301 East Liberty Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Wednesday, March 6, 6pm

What do stickies, standups, and skyscrapers have in common?  Books at JSTOR!

The introduction of Books at JSTOR involved developing new business models to support a new product, immersion in agile methodology, and usability testing and design jams to bridge both geographical and communication gaps. Our team journeyed from standard UX best practices down into the development weeds, up into the strategic stratosphere of our Manhattan-based stakeholders… and back again!

This case study will examine how various UX methods were used to bridge the gulf between the very specific sprint-sized work in an agile environment to the holistic view of the project, with a focus on lessons learned and thoughts about how to improve on our next adventure.

If you are a UX practitioner (whether you do design or user research) and you work in an Agile environment, or are curious about working with Agile, this talk is for you!

About Our Speaker

Tonya McCarley found the field of User Experience by accident in grad school and never looked back.  She was always of the belief that she was a “bad user” and was surprised to learn that it might not be only her.  It just might be the design of the system.  She found her calling! Since that moment, Tonya has enjoyed bringing experiences from her former career in sales to the challenges presented in user experience.

She has been an Information Architect and is now a User Experience Strategist.  She’s been called helpful, annoying, overly enthusiastic, clueless, a pain in the ass, and an asset to the organization.  Through it all, she keeps beating the drum for the user’s experience.

She lives in rural Michigan and is out numbered by the “boys”: her husband, young son, 3 dogs and a guinea pig.

When

Wednesday, March 6
6:00 PM — Networking
6:45 PM — Announcements
7:00 PM — Speaker
8:30 PM — Wrap up and more networking

Location

JSTOR, Ann Arbor

Google Map

There is an underground public parking structure across from the downtown library (enter on 5th street).

Cost

Current students $5
Usability Professionals’ Association members $10
All others $20

Register

Register online at Guestlist so we know who’s coming and how to plan for refreshments. We’ll also take payment (cash or check) at the door. Questions? Email events {at} michiganupa dot org.

Saturday, February 9, 2013, 8:30am–5:00pm

University of Michigan Modern Languages Building Auditorium 3, 812 E Washington St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Cosponsored by the Michigan Usability Professionals’ Association

Speakers include:

• Peter Morville on The Architecture of Understanding
• Malcolm McCullough on What Architecture Does: How Form Informs and Inhabitation Inspires
• Daniel Eizans on Designing For Distributed Content Models
• Chris Farnum and Farris Khan on UXD V. Analytics – What Have You Got for Me? No, What Have YOU Got for ME?
• Karl Fast on TBD
• Andrew Hinton on Context Design
• Jessica DuVerneay and Marti Gukeisen on A Beginners Guide to Taxonomy
• Evening reception at Sava’s

Cost

Free, but registration is required

Questions? E-mail events {at} michiganupa dot org.

Thursday, January 24, 2013, 6:30pm

The Qube, 635 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI

A joint event with Refresh Detroit

As previously said best by Steve Jobs, “The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have.” And the better the design, the more your company will thrive. But how can we clarify to our non–user experience co-workers some basics of user experience? The easiest and obvious point of reference is pop culture; something to which we all can relate.

Steve Tengler, Director of User Experience at Altia Inc, will provide a fistful of UX lessons with a Hollywood foundation for the collective digestion of your coworkers. Practitioners and novices alike will enjoy this fun-filled-yet-educational evening of cinematic analogies.

Cost

Free, but registration is required

Please register at the Refresh Detroit website

Questions? E-mail events {at} michiganupa dot org.