Rey Uys (Standard Bank) and myself (Jason) have been enjoying working on our presentation for this years EuroIA Summit. Our topic was accepted a few months ago and we'll be sharing our experience of creating a version 0 enterprise wide UX Framework for the Standard Bank of SA (retail).

I cannot wait to be in Copenhagen again. It's been a little over 5 years! More about it here http://www.euroia.org/

Posted by jh01 at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Venue: University of Johannesburg, FADA Building Auditorium
18th August 2009
Starts: 6.00pm (drinks will be provided)

Keynote address:
Sylvain Cottong (Integrated Place, Luxemburg) will be speaking on the use of design methods to solve business problems. He will explore how these approaches, traditionally applied to digital, interface driven experiences, can be applied in service design, physical spaces and business management problems.

UX Tools:
Kat Roderick (Microsoft, SA) will demonstrate SketchFlow, a new tool for creating schematics (wireframes) for design and prototyping. She’ll also be giving away a few free copies of the software.

Forum feedback:
Jason Hobbs (jh-01, SA) will provide a welcome and introduction to the User Experience Forum. He will feedback on a workshop held earlier this year where various representatives of corporate, educational, media, marketing and agency industries gathered to understand their needs from the practice of user experience design in SA.

Please RSVP as soon as possible by emailing phillip@jh-01.com

Venue and directions:
FADA Building Auditorium, ground floor in the FADA Building (the Design School opposite the UJ Hotel School) on the Bunting Road Campus of the University of Johannesburg.

The campus entrance is opposite the Gas Works in Auckland Park. Enter in Bunting Road. Pass through the boom, take your first right into the first parking lot. Park and walk all the way down (heading North with the Hotel School on your right). At the bottom walk left over the pedestrian bridge into the Design School and FADA building.

About Sylvain Cottong:
After his studies in economics, Sylvain started to work for the first multimedia production studio in Luxembourg back in 1995. Along with interactive CD Rom productions the agency "352 Production" he also started to produce websites at the very early stages of the World Wide Web. Always interested in the usability, usefulness, desirability and business value of things, Sylvain then got interested in web usability and software usability on a more general level. In 1997 he became an independent consultant in user experience design and networked business strategies. During that time, he also was acting as an adviser to the Luxembourg government on eGovernment & knowledge management strategies as well on Internet communication.

In 2006, he founded integratedPlace, together with his partner Georges
Zigrand, who then came back to Luxembourg after 8 years of professional experience as an industrial designer in London.

IntegratedPlace is a design consultancy and a design management agency that
specialises in (user) experience design, social media communication, environmental design, service design and business innovation.

Sylvain has attended numerous international conferences in different areas of interest during his career and would call himself a "problem solver using design thinking".

About the SA UX Forum:
The Forum was started by Jason Hobbs several years ago to develop a local community of practice for user experience design in South Africa. The Forum exists through a Google Group and has meet-ups in both Cape Town and Johannesburg. Please feel free to join the group:
http://groups.google.com/group/sa-ux-forum

Please feel free to invite your friends. Please RSVP to phillip@jh-01.com

This event is being kindly sponsored by jh-01, Microsoft SA and The University of Johannesburg.

Posted by jh01 at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This month's meet-up for the Joburg contingent of the SA UX Forum will be at Doppio Zero in Rosebank between 6 and 9. If you're in the city we hope to see you there.

Photo's from our last meet up and the one in Cape Town can be found on our Facebook group

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Last Tuesday Jason was invited to present at the Joburg 27 Dinner. He presented the Internet Cafe research outcomes from the 2007 Las Vegas IA Summit conderence with additions from the recent research into Yeoville cafes as part of the Hotel Yeoville project. He also added more recent discoveries such as a hub in Hillbrow along Kotze Street.

Thanks to Mike Stopforth for the invitation. Mike has asked us to present in two months again at the 27 Dinner on the topic of user experience design. See you there.

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Rosenfeld Media launched the 'UX Zeitgeist' last year and it contains "Important books and topics on user experience design, according to the UX community". You'll find it here: http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/zeitgeist/

My page on the site can be found here http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/zeitgeist/people/detail/143/jason-hobbs where amongst other things it notes that I was mentioned in an article on bad breath (hmm - I don't recall that ;)
Jason

Posted by jh01 at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This years IA Summit was in Miami Florida from the 12th - 14th of April. Attendance was up from last year, a trend we see every year. If you want to see the papers then go to the conference website http://www.iasummit.org/2008/ where they usually take a few weeks to get submitted and posted. Check on boxes and arrows for pod casts of all talks, also search on SlideShare or email the presenters directly.

I presented for the third year running on a project we've been working on called Hotel Yeoville which ties into the Internet cafe research we've been ingaged in for the past 2 or 3 years. You can find the presentation on Slideshare here: http://www.slideshare.net/jh01/hotel-yeoville

IA & policy
While in Miami I was interviewed by Olga Howard on the topic of the relationship between or potential influence that could be made by information architecture on 'policy'. This has close ties to the Hotel Yeoville project where we hope the outcome of the online community will be an influence on policy, city planning and design of the area. This interview is available in several parts on YouTube:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8ydHFpvNLM&feature=user
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3oZNV4KHcg&feature=user
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7t29Q8mcso&feature=user
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11wQhPjNMYg&feature=related

The summit is many things: it is the excitement of being around like minded people, it is the presentations, it's the keynotes and reflecting some kind of zeitgeist, it's arguments, discoveries, chatter in the hallways, learning and making new friends. The extroadinary thing is following all this and staying in touch with friends. It seems like the IA community is finally coming out of its identity crisis post the last two conferences, post the arrival of Web 2.0 and post the rise of IXD (interaction design). Andrew Hinton's closing was great: it addressed where we are as a community (of practise), where we're hoping to go and where we've come from. My only complaint is why this didn't come sooner? Why did it take so long for us as a community to respond? Why have we been so insecure? We're fab - as a community, a practise and a discipline. Andrew seems to see UX in the same way that I do. IA is one part of a mix of desciplines and practises that can positively contribute to the design of the user experience. But it is one of several that add to it and one person can be doing more than one thing (IA, IXD, Usability) and one person can work as an IA with others doing other things (IXD, Brand, Usability, Interface, etc etc etc) to create the design of the overall experience.

With the rediscovered confidence of the community back in check post the web 2.0 drive-by the big question on many people's minds is 'where to next for IA?'. There was a lot about real world stuff coming into the sphere of IA in the form of learnings (service design, retention based tactics), there was an increasing emphasis on UX (more and more, slides didn't just say 'IA' they said 'IA / UX' meaning that either our role is broadening, the understanding of it's reach is broadening or over-all, the digital practisioner is required to become more savvy, aware and experienced in the multitude of different parts that come together to make up the UX. And we along with the user who we so vehemently protect are a big big part of it.

And lastly, although belated, Boxes and Arrows have finally put up interviews with a selection of IA's from last years Las Vegas Summit. I'm in there somewhere... http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/meet-your-peers

So, until next year then (or perhaps sooner in Amsterdam at the EuroSummit)... Jason

Posted by jh01 at 07:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So although I was nominated to stand for the vote for the Board of the IA Institute - Jorge Arango, Peter Boersma and Stacy Surla have been elected. I know Jorge and Stacy personally and both will be great for the Institute. Peter no doubt will also do a great job.

Nonetheless, the Institute has asked me back to advise to the Board for another term. Flattered that they'd asked at all, naturally I accepted. So, here's to another year of International time zone co-ordination and late night calls :)

Posted by jh01 at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been nominated (by the wonderful Stacy Surla) to serve on the IA Institute board. This is quite an honour I must say particularly since I'm up against some amazing people. You can read more about it here: http://www.iainstitute.org/en/about/people/candidates_2007.php

Posted by jh01 at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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)

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)

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)

Jason Hobbs has been invited to serve as an advisor to the Information Architecture Institute board for the next year. Thanks guys.

Posted by jh01 at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)