Alan Dye, who has run Job’s Mob’s user interface design team since 2015, will head a new Meta design studio where he will steer design, software and AI integration across the company’s gear.
The hire is a tidy win for the $1.6 trillion social network. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that wearable devices are crucial to his gamble on “superintelligence”, which he thinks will eventually elbow aside smartphones.
Alongside its full-throttle AI model development, Meta in September released its first smart glasses with an inbuilt display that slaps text messages, video calls or its AI assistant’s replies directly onto one lens.
Zuckerberg said the company wanted to “treat intelligence as a new design material”.
He added on Threads that “We’re entering a new era where AI glasses and other devices will change how we connect with technology and each other. The potential is enormous, but what matters most is making these experiences feel natural and truly centred around people."
Job’s Mob confirmed Dye’s exit and said it would promote long-time designer Stephen Lemay, who has clocked nearly three decades at the company.
Apple's supreme dalek chief executive Tim Cook said Lemay had shaped “every major Apple interface” since 1999 and “has always set an extraordinarily high bar for excellence and embodies Apple’s culture of collaboration and creativity”.
Dye will join Meta’s broader consumer hardware effort, including this year’s display glasses, its Ray-Ban smart specs and its Quest virtual reality headsets. He will report to Meta chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, who runs its Reality Labs division.
The departure is the second high-profile loss for Job’s Mob this week after its AI chief, John Giannandrea, said he would retire next spring. The outfit has trailed rivals on AI development and on weaving the tech through its devices.
Amar Subramanya, a former Microsoft and Google DeepMind executive, will replace Giannandrea. Job’s Mob also saw chief operating officer Jeff Williams announce his retirement this summer.
OpenAI has taken a few designers from the outfit as well after buying IO, the hardware start-up run by former star designer Jony Ive.
Dye will be joined at Meta by Billy Sorrentino, who has been with Job’s Mob since 2016 and led the design of VisionOS, the interface on the company’s $3,499 train-wreck-of-a headset, the Apple Vision Pro.
Meta has hired Ruoming Pang, who previously led Job’s Mob’s AI models team, bringing him into its elite TBD Labs AI group. Zuckerberg has dangled compensation packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year to tempt top AI talent.