Driven by product design: Learn more about ramon gervais and my journey
hEllo 👋
i am ramon, A motivated, curious, product and brand Design leadEr.
My career started in 2000 in advertising, then pivoted to UX/UI design in 2009. I lead multidisciplinary design teams, product, research, performance and brand marketing. That includes product and creative designers—researchers and content creators, solving problems in cross-platform communication for startups and scaleups. I'm at my best helping companies turn long-term goals into short-term snippets, moving towards a collective Northstar.
I have driven a Fintech startup with a small team for nine years. We have built it into a severe international company with 230+ people, many skilled teams and three offices across Europe.
Notable mentions
Koen Kam
Founder and CTO at Hyves
Ramon is a skilled product designer who can operate in any team. He stands by his views and outcomes, which any designer should do. But if proven differently, he would be the first to kill his darling and move on. His work looks good, performs and is result-driven; that is the signature that suits him nicely. And he's also a pleasant colleague to work with.
Zoran Kovačević
Sr. Director of Product at Navan
Ramon is a passionate product designer, always looking for better solutions in business and design challenges. Strong-willed when needed and driven to pull projects together over the finish line. And above all, a pleasant team member.
Yann Shaub
Senior Product Designer
Ramon managed me and three other product designers during my time at BUX. He encouraged our team to evolve continually by experimenting with new practices, listened to our feedback and made changes where needed. I loved his human-first approach and will never forget his support in advocating for my promotion.
Katja Po
Head of Product at Stryk
I enjoyed working with Ramon at BUX. He was the Head of Design and greatly helped me and my team. I can confidently say that Ramon hired only top talent and successfully developed them: both designers from his team that I worked with were the best of the best in their field and also fit perfectly into the cross-functional team. And I think that, in many ways, this characterises Ramon as a good manager and mentor.
Ramon played a huge role in rebranding the Stryk app and its complete redesign, from choosing the right colour palette to choosing fonts and a new logo, which was well-received by our community and users. Ramon always understood our users well and knew the product like the back of his hand.
Moreover, Ramon was one of the founders of BUX and both of our applications - BUX and Stryk are largely inspired by his ideas: the simplicity and friendliness of the interfaces are what both applications are famous for.
I can definitely recommend Ramon as Head of Design!
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Yorick Naeff
CEO at BUX
I knew Ramon was a star when we built BUX in the early days. This was all pre-live of our first mobile application. During the almost nine years we've worked together, Ramon became the Head of Design and was responsible for all our friendly user experiences across the different BUX applications. I think everyone knows the uniqueness of the BUX UX/UI, and that's definitely due to the work of Ramon. If I started a new company, I’d hire Ramon immediately to join me in creating a fantastic application again.
Daniel J. Zimmer
Senior UX Researcher at Van Lanschot Kempen
Ramon is an excellent people-driven design leader. While working together, he successfully scaled up a team of designers for multiple digital products, laying the foundations to increase design efficiency while establishing a strong user-centric mindset. I have seen juniors grow into senior designers, and he helped me immensely in scaling UX Research, for which I am forever grateful.
Koen Droste
Co-founder at Polarsteps
I worked together with Ramon on launching Upcoming.nl. Our team brought the project from idea to live within a few months, and Ramon was responsible for the product and brand design of the website and app, as well as the branding. I was very impressed by both Ramon’s thorough approach, as well as the final results of his work. Without a doubt, I would work together with him again!
Kamiel van Eeuwijk
Design Lead | Motion Graphics
I thoroughly enjoyed working with Ramon during our years at BUX. He hired and put his trust in me to form a team focusing on marketing design efforts within the company. We had numerous talks on design, and his shared insights helped me to develop. Ramon is best described as a warm, reasonable, and fun-loving guy with a true passion for design, and highly recommended as your colleague!
mY respOnsibilitiEs
As the "lead designer and UX architect" of previous product experiences, I have partnered with executives to drive a vision for product strategy through research and design. I have:
Shaped the end-to-end consumer experience across different communication inputs and outputs.
Use design methods to identify new problems and opportunities and propose solutions that drive business objectives.
Make the design team stronger through direct mentorship and leading by example, especially regarding UX and visual design quality and attention to detail.
Lead special projects and innovation tracks.
Develop cross-functional relationships and bring people together.
Have responsibility for business-level product design decisions.
The Goods
An equivalent work experience from a bachelor's or master's degree in design or human-computer interaction;
A portfolio demonstrating visual design, interaction design, prototyping and product thinking expertise.
Experience leading a user-centred design process from end to end.
Proficiency in software to create design concepts, prototypes, assets and specifications.
Skills such as Figma, data visualisation, conducting user interviews, front-end programming, data science, illustration, photography, and animation.
In a nutshell:
- Ownership mindset and accountability with experience leading complex projects and driving innovation efforts that uncovered new value with new kinds of user experiences.
- Excels in all communication forms, including storytelling and narrative, to influence and persuade stakeholders.
- Presents design clearly to facilitate valuable feedback while shifting approach based on the audience and the desired outcome.
- Attention to visual detail, high sense of craft/quality, delivering consistent, polished, and balanced layouts through typography, colour, and visual hierarchy.
- Can operate almost entirely autonomously but understands when to bring others into conversations for input and decision-making.
- Experienced leading groups and mentoring other designers.
- Seasoned in all facets of information architecture, interaction design, and UI design.
Experience
Head of Design/Lead Designer, BUX
Fintech, 2014 - 2023
Tasks & Responsibilities
- Talent talks and Career Development for Designers;
- Member of the Leadership Team — Goal/KPI setting, Product and Marketing Strategy, Company values and Vision;
- Driver + Heart and Soul in the company culture — from 8 to 240+ people, Leading & Maintaining a scaleable Design system for Product and marketing;
- Accountable for all visual design, internal and external,
Architect for all user experience in the company's ecosystem — all touch points of a user journey from A to Z.
Want to get a grasp on the features we created?
Feature list here -->
Achievements
- Building/Hired and leading a successful Design Team from 1 to 10+ Designers;
- Creating three investment apps from scratch and multiple other products from paper to the mass (3 million users in EU);
- Monthly savings plan: Increase adoption by 3x (3.5k to 10.6k), Reduce deleted Plans (92% to 28%);
- Market research across five countries, leading to a repositioning of BUX brand with tangible business impact;
- Driving the growth of 2 brands across 8 European markets with a local tone of voice.
EmploYment history
Creative/Product designer, Telegraaf TMG
Benelux Mediahouse, 2013 - 2014
Tasks & Responsibilities
- Coaching a small team of product and creative designers;
- Redesign of multiple core TMG Online Media products;
Recent Achievements
- Concept and Design of Upcoming the Dutch Version of Buzzfeed;
- Concept and Design for the Reiskrant Reporter, a successful travel Blog at that time;
- Redesign JAAP.nl — Real Estate and Housing. Branding, UX and UI improvements in collaboration with user research and engineering;
- Redesign Speurders.nl — Classifieds. Branding, UX and UI improvements in collaboration with user research and engineering;
- Considerable UX/UI Improvements on the Digital News platform on various main verticals, such as finance, healthcare and Woman.
Creative/Product Designer, Hyves
The Netherlands Social Media Network, 2009 — 2013
A Grasp on Tasks & Responsibilities
- Leading 2 product designers
- Product designer of many social features; chats, photo browsers, search, profile pages, Homepage teasers such as local News: the feature list is endless;
- Collaborating with UX & Usability Researchers;
- Creating new concepts with product owners;
- Lead Designer for social media campaigns; in-house design studio;
- Marketing campaigns for famous brands and charities.
Want to get a grasp on the features we created?
Feature list here -->
Achievements
- Designing and shipping the new logged-in homepage in 2009, the logged-out homepage in 2010, and the redesign and rebranding in 2011;
- Incorporating Spilgames into the Hyves games platform;
- Concept and Design for Hyves Mobile, A telecommunication platform with T-mobile as a partner;
- Concept and Design for Hyves Afrekenen, one of the first "Fintech" payment options for Friends;
- Concept and UX/UI designer of a significant, successful soccer prediction platform for the outcomes of soccer matches for the Dutch Eredivisie or the Champions League. You could earn points with your predictions and win prizes. The whole idea started with an internal Hackathon. I recall having over 2 million Hyves members predicting matches.
Creative/Product Designer, eBay and Marktplaats.nl
Classifieds and Marketing, 2004 — 2009
A Grasp on Tasks & Responsibilities
- Coaching the internal design team product and creatives;
- Product design for main verticals such as search, automotive and jobs;
- Collaborating with user research for UX improvements;
- Creating concepts and campaigns with Product owners and marketers.
Achievements
- Being part of the team that cultivated and scaled Marktplaats.nl beyond any competitor and to be "the number-one" website for buying and selling occasions;
- Launching and bootstrapping side products for high-end women's vintage fashion with multiple successful campaigns that broke all company CTR records;
- Design the New Main Search component, which is the core of a product like Marktplaats;
- Leading concept and Art Direction for Marktplaats Services, including photoshoots and casting;
- Launching Marktplaats Aanbieding, a daily deals platform.