Hello. I’m Jason Hobbs, a designer, academic, teacher and speaker living mostly in Johannesburg, South Africa. This site is about my work and the things I do related to design. Have a read, Research & publication
Research interests:
- Information architecture design: Meaning-making, social ontology and reality, social systems problems, synthetic integrity and existential design
- Design strategy, critical, reflexive and reflective practice
- Design ethics, education and (trans)disciplinarity
/ / /
For more than the last decade most of my research and theory has been accomplished with Terence Fenn.
Take a look at Research Gate for a detailed view of all my scholarly publications.
I conduct the majority of my academic research through the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in the Multimedia Department. Prior to this I was a Research Affiliate with the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD)
\ \ \
With the IA Institute: For the 2012 / 13 year I was the chair of the Research Grants Committee for the IA Institute and was a member of the same grants judging panel in 2008, 2009 and 2010. I received the Research Grant award from the IA Institute in 2006 and 2011 (the former with Tegan Bristow and the latter with Terence Fenn).
/ / /
Publications:
Hobbs, J. (2021). Dissertation. University of Johannesburg.
Footnotes to “Re: The Future of Information Architecture”
Hobbs, J. (2021). Journal of Information Architecture. Vol. 06. Iss. 01. Pp. 79–91. http://journalofia.org/volume6/issue1/05-hobbs/.
Realising Discourse: A Strategic Design Solution to the Problem of Addiction
Design Culture(s). Cumulus Conference Proceedings Roma 2021, Di Lucchio, L, Imbesi, L, Giambattista, A & Malakuczi, V (Eds.), Volume #2. PDF: ISBN 978-952-64-9004-5
Cumulus Conference Proceedings Series, N°7, ISSN 2490-046X
Thoughts on Information Architecture as it Relates to Design: The Lost IA
Self published. 2020. Online at ResearchGate. DOI 10.13140/RG.2.2.14131.04642
“The Design of Socially Sustainable Ontologies”
J Hobbs and T Fenn. Journal of Philosophy and Technology. 32, 745–767. 2019.
“Nurturing Critical Citizen Designers: Applying Strategic Models for Reflective Practice”
T Fenn and J Hobbs. In (eds) Costandius, E. & Botes, H. Educating Citizen Designers in South Africa. Sun Press. 141-160. 2018
“Conceiving and Applying Relationship Models for Design Strategy”
J Hobbs and T Fenn. ICORD 1, 6th International Conference of Research into Design. 2017.
“Experience-led Design Strategy”
T Fenn and J Hobbs. Design Management Academy. 2017
“The User Experience Landscape of South Africa” (report)
J Hobbs, M Pretorius and T Fenn. Self published. 2015
“The User Experience Landscape of South Africa” (paper)
M Pretorius, J Hobbs and T Fenn. SAICSIT. 2015
J Hobbs and T fenn. DEFSA. 2015
“The Firma Model: A Meta-framework for Design Research, Strategy and Critique”
J Hobbs and T Fenn. Cumulus Conference. 2015
“The Firma Model: A Tool for Resolving Complex Societal Problems”
J Hobbs and T fenn. DEFSA. 2015
“The design behind the design behind the design”
J Hobbs. Human Experience Design. Presented at the IA Summit. 2015
View the presentation translated into Japanese by Soyeon Lee
“The New Architecture”
J Hobbs. BCS IT Strategy 2014. 2014
“In 2014, brands will need to be digital first- and we need to help them change”
J Hobbs. DigitalArts. 2013
“Navigating indeterminacy through the application of journey design”
J Hobbs and T Fenn. Design Development Research Conference, Kumasi, Ghana. 2013
“Applying user journey design to resolve complex design problems”
T Fenn and J Hobbs. GIDEC, 2013
T Fenn and J Hobbs. GIDEC, 2013
“The information architecture of meaning-making”
J Hobbs and T Fenn. First presented at the 2013 IA Summit Baltimore, USA “Academics and Practitioners Round Table: Reframe IA” and published in “Reframing Information Architecture” Resmini, Andrea (Ed.). 2014 Springer HCI series.
“Pervasive Information Architectures as Architectures of Meaning for Complex Cross-channel Systems”
J Hobbs, A Resmini and T Fenn. Academic workshop. Pervasive 2012, Newcastle, UK. 2012
Hotel Yeoville Terry Kurgan. Fourthwall Books, 2013.
Hobbs J and Fenn T. Design Development Research 2012 Conference Proceedings. 2012
“Teaching the Design Thinking of Information Architecture”
Hobbs J and Fenn T. Pervasive Information Architecture: Designing Cross-Channel User Experiences Resmini A and Rosati L. 2011.
Hobbs J and Fenn T. DEFSA South Africa. 2011.
Hobbs J and Fenn T. DEFSA South Africa. 2011.
On Making: Integrating Approaches To Practice-Led Research in Art and Design. The Research Centre, Visual Identities in Art and Design, Faculty of Art Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg. 2010
Hobbs, J., Fenn, T., & Resmini, A. 2010. Journal of Information Architecture. Vol. 2, No. 1.
UX Storytellers. 2010. Editors: Jan Jursa, Stephen Kover and Jutta Grunewald.
“Designing for developing contexts”
ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology) Bulletin, August / September 2006.
“Am I an Information Architect?”
Information Architecture Institute 2007.
“An Introduction to User Journeys”
Boxes and Arrows 2006.
“Journeys, Needs and Trust: A Volkswagen Case Study”
Boxes and Arrows 2006.
“How Far is the Promised Land?”
Marketing Mix, 2005.
“The illusion of Consistency”
Enjin Magazine, 2005.
Various articles on the old jh-01 website, 2000 – 2008
Various ‘How to write HTML” articles for the MWEB iTutor series, 1998
