Jakob Hilden's profile picture

jkwebs

Hi, I'm Jakob and you are looking at my portfolio site. I'm a frontend web developer from Germany and very interested in everything web, open source and usability.

Side projects

Cologne.rb (current)

Ruby user group from Cologne. I help organizing the user group and building/maintaining the website (which is a fork of the Ruby user group from Hamburg onruby.de )

Website | GitHub

I18nViz (current)

Ruby gem for visualizing i18n strings alongside their keys within the frontend of internationalized Rails/Ruby web applications.

GitHub | RubyGems

TraxelPipe (working title, current)

A simple Sinatra app for debugging "traxel" (tracking pixel, etc.) HTTP requests in a staging/development environment. Built using Pusher and deployed on Heroku .

GitHub

TabViz (retired)

Project to design a feature for usefully visualizing open tabs (and their hierarchical relations) within a web browser. We implemented a simple prototype in form of a Firefox Addon and were awarded the "Best in Class" honor in the category "Innovation" of the Mozilla Labs Design Challenge 2009.

TabViz blog | Mozilla Design Challenge 2009 | Firefox Addon Code

Gallery

Leading open source photo management software. I was active in the project from 2008 until 2009, first as a "Season of Usability" student, and later as a frontend developer and UX mentor.

Gallery website | Season of Usability

Talking-Points (retired)

Designing a Community Driven Orientation System for the Blind. I co-founded this research project in 2008 and helped designing and building several prototypes. It was a selected project of the GROCS research competition 2008 and funded with $10.000. We presented the paper "Accessible Contextual Information for Urban Navigation" at the Ubicomp Conference 2008 in Seoul, South Korea.

Talking-Points website | GROCS | Ubicomp 2008

Education

Master of Science in Information

2007 - 2009
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Specializations: Human-Computer Interaction, Social Computing, User Centered Design

UM School of Information website

B.Sc. in Applied Communication and Media Sciences

2004 - 2007
University of Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg

Specializations: Computer Science, Psychology, Art & Design, Social Sciences

Komedia degree program

Professional Experience

Frontend Web Developer

since 2010
Railslove, Cologne -- web development agency specialized on Ruby on Rails and early stage startups.

I'm doing frontend development and product design support for various clients, especially 9flats.com

Railslove

Usability Manager

2009 - 2010
Traveltainment AG, Aachen -- market leader in the German online travel distribution industry.

I was responsible for analyzing and improving the usability of the Traveltainment products and lead the product management of a next generation travel e-commerce site.

Traveltainment

Freelance Web Developer

2001 - 2009

Since 12th grade in high school I have been doing freelance work as a web developer & designer, working for various small clients and different internet agecies.