Hello. I'm Jason Hobbs, a designer, academic, teacher and speaker living mostly in Johannesburg, SA. This site is about my work and the things I do related to design. Have a read, Category Archives for Research
IA 4 AI // Thought Experiments / 01
Earlier this month I asked ChapGPT: “Could information architectures [+] be used as localised ‘programming’ for LLM’s to improve their outputs? (e.g. to make your responses more consistent, layering and building up of conversations, better synthesis etc.)” [Some context: I’ve … Continue reading
UX South Africa Conference – 2025
Q and A at the end of my presentation The slides for my talk, “Extending the Concept of Information Architecture in Design” presented at UXSA 2025, are now available. Get the Slide Deck(19 MB .pdf file. Sorry about that) Notes … Continue reading
Edit Undo Interview
Back in August 2022, I was interviewed by Edit Undo: “a podcast about all things creative [where] co-hosts Alfi, and Stephanie chat to some fascinating people [like me] in the creative world about their learnings, adventures and their creative craft.” … Continue reading
Contribution to ‘Product’ at the FADA Gallery.
I was invited to share the outcomes of my dissertation at the FADA Gallery exhibition: ‘Product’, in April 2022. The gallery is housed at the University of Johannesburg in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture building. From the invitation: … Continue reading
2017 – 2021 (A Temperamental Journey)
Timeline 2017 – 2021 “A ‘temperamental journey’ was the phrase used…to describe those strange runaways and adventures prompted by arrogance, rebellion or despair” Hesse, Hermann.(1973) Autobiographical Writings. Jonathan Cape, London, pp. 52-53
The Lost Information Architecture
Last year I was unable to complete the chapter I was meant to contribute to the collection Advances in Information Architecture: The Academics / Practitioners Roundtable 2014–2019 (published earlier this year). This was partly because I lacked the resources to … Continue reading
Abundance by Design
Presentation for UX South Africa, on November 4th, 2020. Building upon a rethinking of complexity, a lack of appropriate design skills is identified as the primary limitation to ideating effective solutions in and for complexity. In this scenario, scarcity prevails. … Continue reading
UX Landscape of South Africa
Last year, Dr. Marco Pretorius, Terence and myself embarked on researching and baselining the maturity of UX in South Africa. It was a huge effort but I think it turned out really well. As part of the project we created … Continue reading
Update: DEFSA 2015
This years DEFSA (Design Education Forum of South Africa) theme was ‘ethics and accountability in design’. We submitted two papers. The first, ‘Wicked Ethics‘ and the second ‘The Firma Model’. I think it went well and we definitely enjoyed it. … Continue reading