Hello!
I'm Toby. I'm a designer who's passionate about creating things that matter. My work is driven by a playful curiosity into the intersection of technology and society. I like to make things with social purpose.
Human first,
always.
As a designer, I’m deeply committed to understanding user needs and aspirations, working collaboratively to create solutions that are empathetic and meaningful.
The most exciting thing about emerging technologies is how they can transform the way we interact with our world. Through a human-centered approach, I explore new technologies to create work anchored in ethics.
Currently I’m at Designit Oslo, and on the side you’ll find me making pasta, experimenting with fermentation, and playing with music production.
Experience
- Designit, Oslo
- Senior UX Designer
- UX Designer
- Handmade, Amsterdam
- Interaction Designer
- Star, Munich
- UX Design Intern
- LEGO, Billund
- Design Intern
Education
- Umeå Institute of Design
- Interaction Design MFA
- University of Sussex
- Product Design BSc
Talks & Tutoring
- The School of Visual Arts, NYC
- Short course on Speculative AI Futures
- Interaction 23 conference
- 'Symphonic Experiments' talk
Awards
- Interaction Awards 2021
- Best Student
- Startup Sussex
- Finalist
- LEGO Award for Playful Creativity
- Winner
Professional work
Working with such great organisations on innovation projects means much of my work is NDA’d. I’m happy to chat more about my experiences.
Selected student work
Playground
Making music together, with AI
In this project, I conducted an ‘interactive symphony’, an experiment using machine learning to generate an original piece of music. To start, I created a Miro board that was made public for a week. Here, anyone could add, edit, or remove whatever they wanted. The resulting board was a chaotic mess of elements created by a random group of people.
Fighting digital colonialism
An experiment in future technology governance. Digital colonialism threatens the freedom, security and democracy of humanity. Technology corporations have amassed ruling control over citizens’ access to key infrastructures, whilst extracting and commodifying the personal data of billions. Fighting Digital Colonialism speculates an alternate system of governance in which public bodies intervene to liberate citizens from colonisation by technology.
ML Karaoke Battle!
Imagine a karaoke machine that uses AI to blend two of your songs into an entirely new musical creation. That’s the idea behind ‘DeepKaraoke’, the outcome of a project exploring machine learning as a design tool.
Say hi 👋
Get in touch at hi@tobywhelan.com, see my CV, or reach out on LinkedIn.