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, Design Society Development (DSD) DESIS Lab
I’ve recently become a member of DSD.
The Design Society Development (DSD) DESIS Lab is a multi-disciplinary community of practice, based at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg, that seeks to better understand how design can best serve the emerging needs of broader society, specifically in the face of staggering inequality and rapid change in Gauteng, South Africa…
The DSD DESIS Lab meets monthly to interrogate research, projects, methods and products that impact on the intersection and interplay between design, society and development in our specific context.
- We understand design as referring to the conscious choices we make in creating systems (community, society & productive systems) and technologies (products, artefacts, communicative technologies, systems integration);
- society as the human context that includes the broader social systems of culture, economy, politics and environment;
- and development as the discourse and practice of positive and considered change. We draw on critical political economy, social sciences, appropriate technology development, participatory and human-centered design, and other design approaches in our practice and research.
Find out more:
Johannesburg WIAD 2015
Myself, Terence Fenn, Tasmin Donaldson and Kat Roderick put the Jhb WIAD 2015 event on at the University of Johannesburg for the fourth year running on the 21st of Feb. We had a great time and we’ve had amazing feedback.
Speakers included: Prof. Federico Freschi (Executive Dean, FADA, UJ), Farai Madzima (Freethinking), Joelle Bataille (Native), Marcel Rossouw (Fjord), Jacqueline Fouche (Standard Bank), Jhono Bennett (1to1 – Agency of Engagement), Kgothatso (KG) Lephoko (UJ Multimedia Design student), and Rishal Hurbans (Entelect).
And thanks to our sponsors who included BSG (gold), Entelect (silver) and Freethinking (silver)
‘Features aren’t experiences’ at UX Joburg
I had a great time last Saturday speaking at UX Joburg in Braamfontein. The presentation was on the topic of ‘Features aren’t experiences’. Thanks to the folks from ThoughtWorks for hosting. The presentation is now up on slideshare.
(photos by Tasmin Donaldson)
D3: the design behind the design behind the design
Last year at the IA Summit in San Diego I gave my D3 presentation. It was pretty dense and without good notes (on slideshare) hard to follow. I’ve been working on a visual essay version of it and it’s finally complete. View the presentation here.
EuroIA, Brussels
Well I’ve just returned from Brussels having presented my plenary on ‘Designing for the liminal’. What a great conference and what great people. I’m one of the co-chairs for the Summit next year to be held in Madrid. Wish me luck! Loads of work ahead…
This photo by David Peter Simon
Navigating indeterminacy
Terence and I presented this paper at DDR 2013 in Ghana and I presented it again more recently at World Usability Day, Bristol. You can read the full paper in the conference proceedings.
Annual of IA: 2012 / 2013
Around the end of Q1 next year the first edition of the Annual of Information Architecture will be released. Andrea and I are behind this and we plan for it to be amazing.
Take a look at the site and submit works you believe should be included. If you feel like helping us bring it to life we’re accepting all the help we can get.
Tell your friends…
Accepted for GIDEC 2013
The two papers Terence Fenn and I submitted for GIDEC 2013 in Botswana have been accepted! Unfortunately I wont be able to attend as I’ll be conducting a workshop on cross-channel UX at EuroIA in Edinburgh with Andrea Resmini… So good luck to Terence for the presentations.
The papers for GIDEC are titled: “Preparing undergraduate design students for complexity: a case study of the Johannesburg Art Gallery project” and “Applying User Journey Design to resolve complex design problems”
Hopefully Terence will see you there…
Rad. I’m on wikipedia…
…as an ‘important person’ on the Information Architecture page
I’ve been telling people for ages!
IA Summit 2013 Academic Round Table
Our presentation from the workshop can be found on slideshare. It’s a short ignite-style thing and thus quick and easy to digest.
It was actually an amazing exercise to reduce a 25 page paper into a 5 minute presentation with only 20 slides. As soon as the paper is published I’ll post a link from here.
It really was the most brilliant day. Well done to all.
