professional organizations

Four UX industry leaders came to SI tonight to talk about 'What makes an effective UX professional;' the event was put on by Michigan UPA (MUPA), the Michigan/Ohio chapter of CHI (MOCHI), the Student Organization for Computer-Human Interaction at the School of Information (SOCHI), and the School of Information Career Development Office. Each panelist gave an introduction and some tips, and then the panelists took questions from the audience. Following are some liveblogged notes from each panelist's individual talk as well as a summary of the panel discussion.

Wondering what books, websites, blogs, conferences, and workshops can help prepare you for a career as a User Experience Designer? Designer Whitney Hess recently put together an excellent resource repository on her UX blog, Pleasure & Pain.

SI HCI students Leanna Gingras and Katie McCurdy recently attended the 2009 Information Architecture Summit in Memphis. On their excellent blogs both students recapped the event.

On her blog Usability Fail Leanna wrote:

One of the strongest themes was about pulling together IA as a field, and about how in-fighting about the definition of IA is weakening our position in the job market. This was manifested most strongly in Jesse James Garrett’s closing plenary speech, in which he declared that there was no such thing as an information architect, there never has been, and anybody who calls himself an information architect is a fool or a liar. Rather, we’re all user experience designers.

Source: Flickr

This week Michigan Usability Professionals’ Association and the University of Michigan student chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society hosted an event at the Veterans Administration National Center for Patient Safety (NCPS). There were many SI alums on hand including Michael Beasley, MIUPA President and User Experiologist at Pure Visibility, and the night's main speaker Linda Williams from NCPS.