Tom Longson led Research & Development for Cars.com, and has worked for other companies including Singly Inc, Disney, Wells Fargo, and two startups. He specializes in UX Design and Development, figuring out what the user goals are, as well as ensuring high quality experiences by pushing HTML5 and JavaScript to it's full potential.
A decade developing web apps for intranet uses, and the web at large.
Tom's passion for UX is also informed by an understanding of what is possible, and that will further business objectives.
Tom has led Research and Development, and UX design, and is an advocate of agile UX product design aided by A/B testing.
Designed and did analysis on multiple projects related building the Singly hosted platform for The Locker Project (http://lockerproject.org/). Did development on an interactive guided setup, a merged contacts viewer, an intesting links collection, and a photo collection viewer.
Developed new system for adding, tracking, and searching events, art, theme camps, and people for the Burning Man art festival in Reno, Nevada.
Developing applications and sales tools for commercial credit tools for the Comercial Services branch of Wells Fargo.
Led development on political awareness and action site. Stop the Spin was an experimental project aimed at allowing better understanding of "wicked problems", such as healthcare, abortion, global warming, etc. Used decision trees in order to allow people to explore complex issues, allowing them to arrive at a position based on logical conclusions.
Promoted to head of department. Built and led a team of three developers to pursue potential new interfaces for Cars.com & NewCars.com. Responsible for executing products from concept to frutition. Projects included (but not limited to) advanced tools to allow consumers better ways to find and compare cars, internal tools to visualize sales data geographically, consumer dealer locator tools, car search widgets, and a new car photo compare.
Designed and developed a variety of prototype user friendly applications for Cars.com and NewCars.com.
Designed and implemented a central repository for all television animation staff and potential candidates. System included features to allow management to review and rate all artists, maintain in depth history of creative talent, and preserve a digital archive of portfolios for reprinting and reviewing online.
Implemented site wide features for group ware product called StreetSmart, which is currently used by over 100k users.
Invited to demo the OpenView Project's Streetview Tricycle as part of the Where Fair
Presented Overview at BarCamp LA on Facebook & OpenSocial
Contributed two sections, on defining custom map markers in Google Maps, and creating mapped slideshows of one's travels.
Contributed section on georefrencing images with EXIF metadata
Lectured and demonstrated technology at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego
Published articles on wearable computing and emerging technology to the online publication, iGargoyle
Tom Longson — tomlong@gmail.com — (415) - 633-6634