Alan Dye, the former Vice President of Human Interface Design at Apple, is now moving to Meta. Dye played a significant role in the look and feel of Apple's products, having influenced major design changes and new platforms since 2019, including the interface of visionOS and its new Liquid Glass design language.
Dye had effectively been leading design at Apple since Jony Ive left the company in 2019. However, Dye is not the first designer Apple has lost to a competitor. Evans Hankey, the company’s former head of industrial design, left Apple in 2022 to work with Ive and is now one of several former Apple employees building OpenAI's upcoming hardware device.
The new role at Meta
At Meta, Dye will reportedly work under Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth as the head of a new studio. This studio will oversee the design of Meta's future hardware, software, and AI products.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Threads that the studio will also include:
- Former Apple designer Billy Sorrentino.
- Meta’s interface design lead Joshua To.
- An industrial design team led by Pete Bristol.
- Metaverse design and art teams led by Jason Rubin.
Significance of the move
This appointment is highly significant as Apple is rumored to be working on products that will put the company in even closer competition with Meta. The social media giant has already seen success with its Quest virtual reality headsets and, more recently, its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The company clearly hopes to release many more consumer hardware products with Dye’s expertise and the help of the new design studio.
At Apple, Dye will be replaced by Stephen Lemay, a senior designer at the company who, according to a Bloomberg report, has worked on all of Apple’s interfaces since 1999.
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