UXPA MN

UXPA Minnesota 2026 Kickoff 🎉
2026-02-19 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Chicago) | Brooklyn Park Small Business Center, 7970 Brooklyn Blvd, Brooklyn Park, MN, 55445, United States
UXPA Minnesota 2026 Kickoff 🎉
We’ll save you a seat at the table!
Join UXPA Minnesota for our first community gathering of 2026 — a relaxed, come-as-you-are event focused on reconnecting and starting the year together 🙏🏽
With everything our Minneapolis community has navigated the last couple of months, we wanted to begin the year by simply being in the room with one another. There’s no formal programming and no structured networking. Just space to connect, check in, and ease into the year at a human pace.
To make the evening even more meaningful, we’ll be bringing in food and drinks from local small businesses that have been directly impacted by recent ICE activity in Minneapolis. Supporting our neighbors is one small way we can show up for the broader community while gathering as our own 💙
✨ Free to attend✨ Food and drinks provided✨ Stay for a few minutes or the whole evening
📅 DATE: Thursday, February 19, 2026⏱ TIME: 6:00–7:30 pm📍 LOCATION: 7970 Brooklyn Blvd, Brooklyn Park MN 55445
Open to UXPA members and the broader UX community. All are welcome.
Please note that if you aren’t subscribed to UXPA emails, you will not be able to register for events.
Sign up for our emails here.

Vibecoding 101 with MN Women in AI
2026-03-19 18:00 - 19:30 | MN
Join UXPA Minnesota and MN Women in AI for an introduction to vibe coding—designing and building websites and applications using AI-powered tools.
This session will explore how designers, product thinkers, and builders are using AI tools to quickly turn ideas into working products. The event will include short demos of vibe-coded projects, followed by a fireside chat and Q&A about how to get started and best practices for building with AI.
Curious about AI in product design? Get a practical look at what’s possible and where to begin.
Schedule
6:00–6:10 PM: UXPA Minnesota Announcements
6:10–6:40 PM: Vibe Coding Demos
6:40–7:10 PM: Fireside Chat with MN Women in AI
7:10–7:30 PM: Q&A
Virtual Event
The Zoom link will be shared via email before the event.
Vibe Coding 101
Vibe coding is an emerging approach to building digital products using AI-powered development tools. Instead of writing large amounts of code manually, creators collaborate with AI to rapidly prototype and launch working applications. This event will showcase short demos of vibe-coded projects built using platforms such as Lovable and Claude Code, followed by a fireside conversation about how people are experimenting with AI-assisted development today. Attendees will learn how AI tools are changing the way ideas move from concept to product, best practices for getting started, and how designers and product thinkers can participate in this new workflow.

Meet the Speaker: Tanya Coller

Tanya Coller is a digital product strategist, AI product coach, and founder of Crinkle.ai. She works at the intersection of UX, product strategy, and AI-powered development, helping teams rapidly prototype full-stack applications using tools such as Lovable, Supabase, and modern LLMs. Her work focuses on mapping user journeys, identifying where generative AI adds real value, and quickly turning ideas into working products that serve both users and business goals.

Meet the Speaker: Shannon Seaver
Shannon Seaver is a nonprofit leader, startup founder, and strategist focused on expanding access to STEM and technology careers. She works at the intersection of education, workforce development, and AI-powered learning, helping organizations build programs and tools that connect talent, technology, and opportunity. Her work focuses on creating innovative learning experiences and exploring how emerging technologies can make tech education more accessible.

Meet the Speaker: Caroline Holden

Caroline Swift Holden is a creative technologist with a background spanning startups, AI, venture capital, advertising, comedy, and film. She’s helped sell a data/AI startup to Snowflake in four months as Head of Marketing, and scaled a grocery delivery app 10,000% during the first 3 months of the pandemic.Today, she runs Swift Start Go, a media brand exploring AI, creativity, and the future of work. Caroline is also the co-founder of Minnesota Women in AI, a growing community of innovators, technologists, and creatives advancing responsible AI adoption across industries.

You must create a free account for events or you must be a member of UXPA-MN.
Please note you must be subscribed to our emails in order to get event information.

Designing for Complexity: UX Across Systems, Scale, and Reality
2026-04-16 18:00 - 20:00 | U of M: McNeal Hall, 1985 Buford Avenue, St. Paul, MN, 55108, United States
UX doesn’t live in simple flows. It lives in complex systems, shifting requirements, and real constraints.
Join a panel of experienced practitioners as they share how they design across large-scale systems, navigate ambiguity, and make decisions when there isn’t a clear answer.
If you’re curious what UX actually looks like on the job, this is a good place to start.
Schedule:

Panel Discussion
Q&A

Food and Beverages will be provided

Location (In-Person Only):
U of M, McNeal Hall 33
1985 Buford Avenue
Saint Paul, MN 55108
Map for McNeal Hall and recommended parking in the Gortner Ave Ramp

Panelists:

Jared Johnson
Jared Johnson is an Experience Design Consultant with over 10 years of experience building digital products & services for corporate enterprise organizations to start-ups. His professional expertise spans traditional experience design, interface design, usability testing, and digital product strategy.
His experience spans the industries of finance, healthcare, construction, agriculture, and legal and has worn many hats ranging from Production Artist and Graphic Designer to Interactive Designer and Experience Strategist. He has been featured on technology podcasts, written blogs highlighting best practices when building digital products, presented to dozens of technology professionals on industry trends, curated design topics + speakers for local conferences, and contributed to panel discussions for events like World Usability Day. Jared is highly engaged in the local Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota design community where he lives as well as supports regional, national, and international chapters of collaborative communities of professional like UXPA, Nielsen Norman Group, and Minnesota Digital Services.

Mathias Rechzigel
Mathias Rechtzigel is a Civic Technologist with a focus on increasing the usability and accessibility of safety net programs. Past work include the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, General Services Administration, the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, UnitedHealthcare, U.S. Bank, Best Buy, and more.

Jared Burseth
Jared Burseth has spent the last four years designing the the clinical software that physicians and nurses rely on to care for patients. As Lead Designer at MEDITECH, he interfaces with HCA, the largest for-profit healthcare corporation in America. He was previously an award-winning classical pianist.
Outside of work, he’s a dad, a husband, and a film enthusiast with an unexplainable interest in the business side of cinema.

You must create a free account for events or you must be a member of UXPAMN.
Please note you must be subscribed to our emails in order to get event information.

AI in UX: Promise, Peril & the Empathy Gap with Friends of Figma
2026-06-04 14:00 - 15:30 | Virtual Event
Join UXPA Minnesota and Friends of Figma for a real-world look at designing with AI — including a live demo using Figma Make, Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot in an actual design workflow.
AI tools are changing how UX designers work. Faster ideation, smarter synthesis, quicker prototypes. But speed isn’t the whole story. In this session, two UX designers share an honest look at where AI genuinely improves their practice, where it introduces risk, and what it still can’t replace. We’ll dig into real challenges like biased outputs, oversimplified personas, and the pressure to move fast in spaces that require deep empathy, drawing on examples from our own work. We’ll then walk through a live demo showing how we use Figma Make alongside other tools within a real design workflow, including examples of where we challenge or refine the tool outputs along the way.
Whether you’re already integrating AI into your practice or still figuring out where to start, this session offers honest insight and practical takeaways from the field.

Meet Our Speakers

Ryan Payne
Ryan is a “Design-gineer” with over a decade of experience blending interactive design and a developer’s mindset to create custom user experiences, prototypes, and solutions that align with client goals. He combines human-behavior insights with evolving technology trends to seamlessly integrate creativity and functionality across user experience design and product strategy.

Camila Cartagena
Camila is a user experience designer who blends creativity with strategy to deliver user-first solutions in healthcare. With a background in graphic design and further education in business, she brings a thoughtful, multidisciplinary approach to problem-solving. She’s passionate about listening to users to guide her design decisions. Outside of work, Camila enjoys marathon training, playing with her golden retriever, and spending time with family and friends.
💻 This is a Virtual Event 💻
After you sign up for this event, on the day of the event you will receive a link to the Microsoft Teams call where this session will be held.
PLEASE NOTE:

You must create a free account for events or you must be a member of UXPA-MN.
You must also be subscribed to our emails in order to get event information.

UXPA Minnesota Summer Social 2026
2026-07-23 16:30 - 18:30 | Rail Werks Brewing Depot, 4055 Central Ave NE, Columbia Heights, MN, 55421
UXPA Minnesota Summer Social 2026
Join UXPA Minnesota for our annual Summer Social! Connect with fellow UX professionals over refreshments, conversation, and community in a relaxed, welcoming atmosphere.
Whether you’re a designer, researcher, product manager, content strategist, student, or simply curious about user experience, we’d love to have you join us.
Event Details

Date: Thursday, July 23, 2026
Time: 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Location: Rail Werks Brewing Depot
Address: 4055 Central Ave NE, Columbia Heights, MN 55421

What to Expect

🍻 Complimentary refreshments
🤝 Networking with the local UX community
🎁 Raffle prizes every UX professional will love
🎓 2026 UXPA Scholarship Program kickoff details
☀️ A casual evening celebrating our growing community

Who Should Attend?
This event is open to everyone interested in User Experience, Product Design, UX Research, Service Design, Human-Centered Design, or related design-thinking disciplines. Members and non-members are welcome.
Registration
This event is free to attend, but please register in advance so we can plan for attendance and send event updates.
Register here: https://tally.so/r/A7GlLo.
We look forward to seeing you on July 23!
