Tom Hulbert is a designer who is interested in what products do, how they behave and how they communicate their function.
He is a graduate of MA Product Design at the Royal College of Art,
and subsequently worked at IDEO in London. He now runs Luckybite, a
design and innovation company, with Durrell Bishop.
Within the context of the RCA, as in his professional practice, he
is particularly interested in how designers can explore function,
interactivity and behaviour in products through creative
experimentation with digital technologies such as electronics. As such,
he is actively involved in researching, developing and teaching the
methods and tools that can enable this.
Tom Hulbert works across product design, physical interfaces and
interactive media. He has worked for IDEO in London and has been
involved in research at Casio in the US and at the Interaction Design
Institute in Ivrea Italy. His work at IDEO ranged from design for
products and environments to user interfaces. Tom’s interface design
for the Olivetti MyWay printer helped IDEO win an IDEA Bronze Award in 2007 and the 2006 Design Week Award for Best Consumer Product.
In 2005 he co-founded Luckybite with Durrell Bishop. Luckybite work
on product and interface research, design and development for clients
such as Nokia, Panasonic and the BBC. Luckybite are also innovators in
the area of interactive media and installations and have created a
number of interactive pieces for the Science Museum in London. Their Dinner Table for the Science Of Survival
exhibition received a nomination for the Design Museum’s Design of The
Year Awards 2009. Luckybite also create new prototype electronic
products that mix hardware, software and networks, and explore ways in
which these can be developed further either commercially or within a
research context. Tom is a named inventor on one granted patent and on
several patent applications.
He joined the RCA in 2003 where he became the Electronics Tutor on the Design Interactions programme.