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, Tokyo round-up: UX Strategy Forum (Sociomedia), Metaphase workshop and IA Camp
The incredible folks at Sociomedia brought me to Japan (along with Dan Klyn and Peter Morville) to participate in the UX Strategy Forum for Summer 2015.
Outside of Tokyo being utterly mind-blowing (the people, the city, the culture) the conference was superb as well. On the first day I presented my work on the Firma Model and on the second, the application of the Model (all work I’ve been doing with Terence Fenn).
Below: Me presenting the Firma Model on day 1 on UXSF, Dan and Peter and myself (plugged in) with the Sociomedia team
Prior to the conference however I had the privilege of conducting a workshop on the use of the Firma Model with staff from Metaphase (one of the sponsors of UXSF). This was particularly interesting as 1. I’ve never conducted a workshop using the Firma Model and 2. I’ve never done it in Japanese. I got really great feedback and the work by the Metaphase folks was amazing.
Below: My workshop with the Metaphase team
Lastly, I was also able to speak at the Tokyo IA Camp organised by Concent. Soyeon Lee had translated my piece “The design behind the design behind the design” into Japanese so I figured it would be good to present that…for two gruelling hours.
Below: IA Camp, Tokyo
So all in all it was really hard work and really great fun. And what a country! I would give anything to go back again. I discovered some of the nicest people in our field and we were treated like royalty. All round, it was amazing.
Below: View from my hotel ala ‘Lost in Translation’
