Thibault Durand

Freelance Front-end engineer

I'm a French Front-end engineer with 5 years of professional experience working with web technologies (and more than 10 years of passion for the web). I'm visually oriented and practical, and I love to create simple, intuitive, and effective interfaces that make our complex world a little simpler.

My mission is to make your business more efficient by creating or improving your interfaces, but also increase their lifespan and maintenance cost.

I can work with you on defining the most suitable solution to your needs, I have gained experience in mobile apps (Phonegap), business interfaces (dashboards, stock management, e-learning platform ..), responsive websites, UX thinking, and done some crazy innovative interfaces. I've worked with solo teams up to tens of engineers, on 2 weeks projects up to 12+ months.

I've been working remotely for 5 years, communication won't be an issue, I will fit into your workflow and suggest improvements if needed. I can work in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

I tweet and blog, my last write up is "How we created an immersive Street Walk Experience with a GoPro and Javascript"

Single Page Applications

Javascript, React.js, Redux, ES6, Babel, Backbone.js

I have been working on contract work on the toptal platform, on React.js & Flux architectures for almost 1 year now.

I believe React.js and Redux paradigms are a big step forward to build performant, maintainable, modular and testable interfaces, I have been working on internal dashboards, an eventbrite like app, and worked on building a complete online learning platform for Techchange.

Previously, i have been working for 3 years on a PhoneGap App for Mosalingua, where I built a complete mobile app with Backbone.js and a custom UI, shipping to hundred of thousands customers on both iOS and Android.

Toptal Profile (you can hire me outside) Why React.js / Redux paradigms are changing the game for large SPA apps

Redux dev experience, all state mutations are recorded and replayable.

Innovative interfaces

Webdocumentary, SVG, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Interactive website, Animation

Having been living in South America for 4 years, I always been amazed by their street vendors, and I recently had the opportunity to partner up with a Colombian film maker to build this interactive documentary.

It features the day to day life of the street vendors of Medellín in a Street View like experience, you can stroll through the streets and see short documentaries about their life.

You can read a detailed blog post about it, it was a big technical challenge to figure out how to build a custom google street view: from filming it to building the interface.

I also had the opportunity to work on interactive website with some nice animations, like for Pillr company

Go to the experience Read about how we made it GitHub repository

The street view like experience, try it on pregonerosdemedellin.com !

Animated interactive website work

Responsive Websites

Bootstrap, HTML, CSS, SVG, Javascript

The past year I have been building more traditional responsive websites, mainly for small business.

Most of the time just do the integration from Sketch, Illustrator, Photoshop files in a full responsive, pixel perfect and performant HTML, CSS, Javascript website.

But I can also build the fullstack and use a Content as Service provider like prismic.io to provide a flexible and powerful way to manage, versioned content with a user friendly interface and no code.

The websites I build are fully optimized for SEO.

Expedition Colombia (built interface + backend) Cartonnerie Jean (built interface + backend) Qui connait un bon (only integration work)

Landing page of http://expeditioncolombia.com , built using Bootstrap.

Website of http://carton-jean.fr , built using Bootstrap.

Admin interface for Expedition Colombia, using prismic.io

Pixel perfect responsive integration of "Qui connait un bon", french recommendation website.

Pixel perfect responsive integration of "Qui connait un bon", french recommendation website.

Mobile Apps

Phonegap, HTML, CSS, UX, Javascript, iOS, Android

I led the technical development of the MosaLingua apps for 3 years where I oversaw a complete rewrite with PhoneGap/Backbone.js/SASS for both Android and iOS (one codebase) and rethought of UX design of several features.

Deployed each 2 months for hundred of thousands users and worked remotely with a team of 10 across 3 continents, and managed feedback from users in 4 languages.

I've been learning a lot on specifics challenges of both iOS and Android devices (and webviews) and surfed at the edge of PhoneGap and hybrid apps possibilities.

I'm currently really enthusiast of seeing React Native coming to the light, I didn't have the chance to work with it yet, but my hope is that it can solve some issues of multiplatform mobile app development that PhoneGap can't.

MosaLingua Android MosaLingua iOS

PhoneGap App to learn languages by MosaLingua

UX Thinking , User testing

On every project I work on, I use a critical UX eye, trying to make the user experience the simpler I can.

One of the best presentation I've seen on UX design was given by @mrjoe, in one sentence: design for emotion and match human mental models.

I usually sketch on pencil and paper, but can do mockups of UX ideas on Omigraffle or Invision. I did a bit of user testing on the webdocumentary I worked on, but usually projects don't have such budget.

Psychology and the Perfect Design

Simple UX flow schema

Open Source Work

My Open Source work is a bit limited, but if you head to my GitHub profile, you will see that:

  • I've built a simple Bus transit visualization for South American chaotic bus networks and inexistent maps. I blogged about it few years ago, it is now used 1000 times a day in Fortaleza (Brazil).

  • The work on the webdocumentary I built is open source, I blogged about it too.

  • I've been submitting few PRs on PhoneGap plugins and javascript libraries / tools.

GitHub profile Story of the transit map of Fortaleza

Github profile