Tom Hermans

About Me

Work Experience

1. UX Designer / Front-End Developer

   04/2021 – 06/2021

   EasyFairs · remote

   UX design, design system development, building and designing UI prototypes, components and reusable configurable components.

   Easyfairs needed someone to work along another UX expert for a while to bring more focus on design and design systems, themeability etc…

   I worked along with him and the project leads, mostly with Figma and HTML/CSS on prototypes of pages. From quick mocking to detailed pulling apart of templates and components, at the end of the mission I was mostly involved in updating the Figma files to reflect the components, correct styles and design tokens, while initially I was working in code more.

   Tech stack; Figma, Bootstrap, Sass, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, web components, design tokens, design systems, WordPress

2. Front-End Developer / UX Designer

   09/2020 – 04/2021

   Appsaloon · remote

   Frontend and UI development, building and designing UI with code. For various projects of Appsaloon.

   At Appsaloon I started on working on the designs and frontend for Bingel. This involved adhering to the already specified design system, chosen typography and color scheme, and improving this where necessary e.g. for accessibility reasons.

   Since Bingel is a playful platform targeted towards children, a lot of bright colors were used and I also developed a few nice animations, some for an overall pleasant view, some to enhance the brand in small interactions. For instance a cake topping questionnaire where you could vote on ingredients or add your own.

   In various other projects I lent a hand in fixing JavaScript or CSS issues, figuring out specific filtering ideas, animation, googlemaps possibilities etc… I

   And at the end I helped build the new Limtec site by designing and prototyping a complete site overhaul, rethinking the ways information could be found, courses could be booked etc. This all in a very agile way, sketch to code-centered approach so no time was lost and a true “one source of truth”.

   Technologies and methodologies; Sass, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, NextJS, WordPress, BEM, Tailwind, SVG, css animations, JS animations, Figma, design tokens, design systems

3. UX Engineer / Front-end Developer

   04/2019 – 07/2020

   ACA IT Solutions · Hasselt / Olen, BE

   UX Engineer, building and designing UI with code. For ACA-IT, Amfori and other clients.

   My role at ACA IT Solutions comprised of two parts, on one hand assist the Marketing and Recruitment team with their digital endeavours, keeping the WordPress website up to date, code-wise, implementing new technologies and figure out an architecture, both backend and front-end with regards to UX for the visitors and stakeholders to move all exisiting sites into one monolith.

   On the other hand, I was the go-to UX / Front-end person within the Amfori project, designated to think of new features, consider UX best practices, and translate those into working code to be handed to the backend development team, and be the support person for their questions.

   >Technologies and methodologies; very diverse between projects. GraphQL, Headless CMS, React / Vue / WordPress CMS / Sass / design tokens / atomic design / Gulp / Tailwindcss / Theme UI / Gatsby / nuxt / gridsome / Figma / Adobe XD / ChartJS

4. Senior Front-end Developer

   07/2018 – 03/2019

   Yappa · Bilzen, BE

   Front-end designer / developer building websites for Yappa internal projects and their clients.

   Built quite a few sites with various difficulties. Also got involved in streamlining their front-end base setup and general project workflow.

   >Tech stack; Symfony PHP / KunstmaanCMS / Twig / Sass / BEM / Gulp / VueJS

5. Senior Front-end Developer

   11/2017 – 04/2018

   Miele / Osudio · Hasselt, BE

   With the great team at Osudio I worked on their front-end team to get the new Miele marketing and e-commerce site live. I was responsible to translate the designs into working, **reusable components and templates for use in their brand new website. Employing Atomic Design with a consistent BEM syntax we built various components and templates, which were stored in a living style guide with the necessary documentation. Although I was a lot brain and hands for hire, my input was very welcome, and I really enjoyed working with them.

   Tech Stack; HTML / Sass / BEM / JS / Webpack + Jekyll (static site generator) for the styleguide creation

6. Business Analyst Q-Park website Nordics

   03/2017 – 09/2017

   Q-Park / Cegeka · Maastricht, NL

   For the new to be developed websites of QPark Holdings country branches a start was made. I was responsible for aligning the different countries on a common feature set, while guarding the scope, and analyzing their wishes and communicating those to the developers. This involved designing mockups and wireframes, communicating via online meetings, writing User Stories, testing features and providing documentation to the respective country’s marketing team.

   Responsible for the development of the new Nordics websites for Q-Park. Analyzing business needs, designing wireframes and interface components and go-between for Q-Park business and Cegeka developers. https://www.q-park.dk/da/ & https://www.q-park.se/sv-se/

   Tech stack; HTML / CSS / Sass / BEM / Gulp / Atomic Design / design with Sketch / Photoshop / browser

7. YeloPlay > Senior Front-End Developer

   07/2015 – 02/2017

   Telenet Yelo · Mechelen, BE

   Building the new Yelo web app in an agile team.
   Mostly Angularjs development, and for me specifically mostly UX / Front-end / Design / Sass

   Working at Telenet, the number one player in Belgium when it comes to TV, Internet and Telecommunications.
   I was involved in the complete overhaul for their Yelo TV platform, where people can use their laptop, tablets or phones to watch TV, program recordings, re-watch them or order films or series to watch.
   In the SCRUM team I’m responsible for UX and front-end, as well as following up on reported bugs and maintaining and adhering to the visual style and designs through code. YeloPlay is built as a SPA on Angular.

   Tech stack; Angular / HTML / CSS / Sass / BEM / Gulp / Atomic Design / design with Sketch / Photoshop / browser

8. Senior Front-end Developer Tink*

   09/2014 – 07/2015

   Digipolis · Antwerpen, BE

   Together with a team of Tinkerers, UX and Front-end Developers, I was involved in building a complete front-end framework *Tink, with specific attention to unified UX and design, targeted towards the development of web apps for government. To improve on the current situation where there was a mishmash of styles, ux patterns or non-existant ux patterns.

   Therefore our team of UX designers and Front-end developers try to ‘tink’ real hard on use cases, on best practices, but also how most developer can deploy this with smallest effort possible.

   Tech stack; HTML / CSS / Sass / BEM / Gulp / Atomic Design / design with Sketch / Photoshop / browser

9. UX Engineer / Front-end Developer

   04/2011 – 07/2014

   SONY Europe · Zaventem, BE

   UX Engineer, working for Sony E-Commerce Sony Store Online and Marketing team.

   UX team, mainly design and front-end development of all online projects including the global design system.
   Marketing team, development for Web Merchandising, design and development of campaigns for all European outlets in 19 languages.
   Maintaining MarCom and UX guidelines.

   Campaign work

   • Information Architecture
   • Campaign Design
   • Automation of production pipeline (esp. re: translations)
   • Campaign Launch & Deployment
   • SEO & Analytics tagging

   Development

   • General Site Development
   • Front-end development
   • Gatekeeper of the Front-end Framework in Europe
   • Template development (HTML5/XML/XSLT)
   • Scripts and tools for internal use(translator app, img automation etc)

   Usability & UX

   • Prototyping
   • Creating mockups
   • Analysis of web journey
   • Discussing Persona Behaviour
   • Task Driven UX design

   >Technologies and methodologies; very diverse between projects. HTML, CSS, Less, WordPress CMS, RWD, atomic design / Gulp / Adobe Creative Suite

10. Designer / Developer

    12/1999 – 04/2011

    Various companies and organisations · Belgium

    Multiple jobs / functions at various companies.
    Amongst those Studio 100, Nascom, Telenet Business, CIPAL, PSG, Big Media Group, Verso…

    Also various freelance short-term or fixed-term assignments for Unicef, AXE, These Days Y&R, Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Edelman, BBDO, Mars, Wunderman, Headoffice…

    Built sites for Unicef, Oasis, Axe, Studio 100, Ici Paris XL, VLAM, real estate builders, mainly using WordPress and custom built themes and custom functionality (e.g. payment system for Unicef, reservation modules for the real estate sites, clever modular components for Studio100, voucher handling system for Axe’s partnership with Zalando).

Education

1. Always Be Learning

   09/2004 – 12/2020

   A lot of what I know and the skills I possess were acquired through self-learning. Via thousands of articles and blogposts, github repo’s, OSS code, skill sharing platforms as Egghead or Pluralsight or even Skillshare and YouTube.

   In the last few years I learned more on:

   2019 - 2020
   Headless CMS, CSS properties, Atomic CSS, TailwindCSS, ES6, Vue, React, GatsbyJS, Gridsome, GraphQL, nuxt, SVG, Canvas, Charting libraries, VuePress, Next.js, RaspberryPi, Arduino, MIDI interfacing, font creation, …

   2018 - 2019
   Design Systems, CSSGrid, VueJS, Nuxt, React / GatsbyJS, TailwindCSS, algorithmic layouts with Sass, lots of UX/Design reading and also regarding modular approach of layout systems (typography, color, spacing), utility-first CSS, sass-maps etc…

   2016 - 2017
   Jekyll, Flexbox, REST API, AngularJS, WP WooCommerce, a11y, Accessibility

   2015 and before…
   AngularJS, BEM, Sass, Compass, SVG icons, Greensock animation
   Responsive Web Design, Progressive Enhancements, Atomic Design, UX Principles, E-commerce, HTML5/CSS3, JSP, XML/XSLT, web apps, Angular, Sass, Hammer, Grunt etc

2. A1 Computer Sciences

   09/2004 – 06/2006

   STEP college · Hasselt, BE

   Evening college

3. Communications Sciences

   09/1995 – 09/1999

   VUB - Vrije Universiteit Brussel · Brussels, BE

4. Industrial Sciences

   09/1990 – 06/1995

   PROVIL · Lommel, BE

Worked for