For the next two days I'll be at the Digital Freedom Expo at UWC in Cape Town. The Shuttleworth Foundation have graciously given me a ticket (thanks) in anticipation of us working together in the near future. The expo looks like it should be amazing with the likes of Lawrence Lessig, Eve Gray, Jimmy Wales, Ebrahim Rasool, Heather Ford and many other very cool 'open' people.

Posted by jh01 at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A little while ago I had an interview with the IA Institute for their newsletter's Global Spotlight. You can see it here. I think it's so great (and important) that the Institute is becoming so visibly interested in the global condition of IA. Well done guys.

Posted by jh01 at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have just created a Google Group for anyone that would like to participate in an ongoing conversation around user experience. It is aimed at people working in South Africa as we're trying to grow something of a community. So if you're interested in UX, if you're a business trying to understand it or if you're a designers (information architect, interface designer, information designer, usability dude, etc) then please join.

You will find it here: http://groups.google.com/group/sa-ux-forum

We've got a few people on board, from Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg and we've started a discussion around "What is UX?", (growing) resources and glossary pages.

This will tie in with our real world events which we will be hosting this year.

Posted by jh01 at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We're delighted to announce that we'll be working with the Ford Motor Company SA on Ford & Mazda. We're looking forward to doing some amazing work with a client that is totally behind the user centered design process. Well done to them for seeing the value.

Posted by jh01 at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've completed our contextual enquiry into Internet cafes in Johannesburg and are blown away with what we've found. The final paper is here: "Communal computing and shared spaces of use: a study of Internet cafes in developing contexts".

Every year the IA Institute offers two progress grants. This year we got one of those for this research and would really like to thank the grants committee for choosing us. Special thanks also to Karl Fast who helped with getting the paper ready for the Summit.

We're not full blown researchers here at jh-01 but it goes to show what can happen with a little help from the community of IA.

Posted by jh01 at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've just returned from Las Vegas from the 7th IA Summit which was fantastic. I presented two papers: one dealing with the outcome of our contextual enquiry into Internet Cafes (in collaboration with Tegan Bristow); the other dealing with careerism and survivalism trying to do UX and IA in Johannesburg. It really went well.

Posted by jh01 at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

YAY! A new client. JH-01 assisted TwoTone design in winning the SA'n Airways pitch. We've just started work on the project helping out on the user experience design and IA for their primary site www.flysaa.com. We're also excited to mention that Tim Jones will be assisting us.

Posted by jh01 at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Stacy Surla has written a great article on the topic of growing communities of practice for IA in those parts of the world where IA is little known. JH-01 even gets a mention! ;)

Posted by jh01 at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)