What do you want to get from your UXPA membership? What do you need most? How can UXPA deliver the most value to you? Use this section to discuss what kinds of benefits, resources, and tools are most important to you as a UXPA member. What else would be would be useful?
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One of the things that I think UXPA could do better than other UX groups (IAI, IxDA, etc) is to offer group health insurance and other benefits. I know this is complicated and state by state, but our industry is one where we often change jobs a lot and go from internal to freelance to agency throughout our careers. I’d think offering health insurance and other benefits would be a great help to many members.
Eddie,
That’s a great idea. Does anyone out there belong to a professional organization that does that? I know STC had discounts from Geico or something like that for a while…not sure if they still do. What other benefits would be relevant to you, Eddie?
Thanks!
Rich
I believe Liberty Mutual (a co. that employs a number of UXPA members) offer group discount programs that might be a way to offer this – at least for home and car insurance, not sure about health.
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) offers group life insurance, disability insurance, and maybe health insurance. I get that through my SIGCHI membership with ACM.
AIGA has a slew of discounts and benefits, not sure if healthcare is included, as I’m having difficulty loading their website at moment. However the ‘AIGA Upstate NY chapter site is working, here’s a peek at what they offer. http://upstatenewyork.aiga.org/membership I dont see healthcare…?
NYC has the Freelancers Union that offers insurance benefits http://www.freelancersunion.org/ and Healthy New York for small businesses, sole props, and independents — not sure if that’s something an association like ours could get in on or not, but we may be able to develop relationships to offer member discounts. http://www.dfs.ny.gov/healthyny/index.html
Another example is AARP.org, a membership organization that has all kinds of discounts including insurance and healthcare.
That’s a great idea, Eddie. I know that at one point ACM offered a group health insurance option but doesn’t anymore. Neither does HFES which also used to, although they offer discounts on car rentals.
One question: Since we’re an international organization, what do you think of benefits that are only available in one geography? For instance, what if we can get a discount for car rentals with Hertz/whoever, but only with the US division? Are there some things that would seem OK offering in one part of the world but not in others – assuming there were other compelling benefits that were offered globally?
AIGA’s health insurance plans: http://www.aiga.org/health-insurance-discounts/
ACM insurance programs: http://www.acm.org/membership/insurance with http://www.acminsure.com/ more informative
ASIS&T insurance plans: https://www.personal-plans.com/asist/welcome.do
Did not find any other insurance benefits for UX-related organizations, but also did not look too hard.
AIGA is starting to release its new membership plans, benefits, etc. Latest newsletter: http://www.aiga.org/common/newsletter/membership/source/2012.07.25_membership.html
Not sure yet whether the 5 plans are a good idea or not, but they put a lot of thought into it (from what I hear), so UXPA leader should at least be aware of it and talk about how something similar works/does not work for UXPA.
This is probably already in hand but discounts on usability-related software and services are always good to have.
And how about some kind of mentoring scheme? More senior members can volunteer to help more junior ones by mentoring with specific advice, etc? Maybe they somehow earn extra credits by doing this?
Ben, mentoring would be awesome! I’m a relative newbie to formal UX work (1.5 years, brand-new to UXPA) and I’m coming primarily from a text background (forms, manuals, charts, etc.). I could sure use a senior mentor!