Meta taps Apple design executive Alan Day to lead Reality Labs’ new creative studio

Alan Dye, the design executive who has led Apple’s UI team for the past decade, will leave the company to join Meta, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

This is an important hire for Meta, as the company moves into consumer devices like smart glasses and virtual reality headsets. Day will focus on improving the AI ​​features in these devices and will report directly to Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth.

At Apple, Dai will be replaced by Steve Lemay, who has had a “key role in designing every major Apple interface since 1999,” according to a statement Apple CEO Tim Cook gave to Bloomberg.

Meta appears to be recruiting rivals to help the company compete in the AI ​​race, as Meta also recruited researchers from OpenAI this summer. (Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg allegedly hand-delivered homemade soup to an OpenAI employee at a recruiting drive; Mark Chen, OpenAI’s chief research officer, said he has since delivered his own soup to promising Meta recruits.)

Shortly after news of Day’s departure broke, Zuckerberg announced a new creative studio within Reality Labs that Day will lead. There, he’ll be joined by Billy Sorrentino, another former Apple designer who led interface design across Reality Labs; Joshua Tu, who led interface design across Reality Labs; Meta’s industrial design team, led by Pete Bristol; and the metaverse art and design teams led by Jason Rubin.

Zuckerberg said the studio “will combine design, fashion and technology to define the next generation of our products and experiences.”

“Our idea is to treat intelligence as a new design material and imagine what becomes possible when it is abundant, capable, and human-centric,” Meta’s CEO wrote on Threads. “We plan to raise the bar on design within Meta, forming a talented group with a combination of craftsmanship, creative vision, systems thinking, and deep experience in building distinctive products that bridge hardware and software.”

This article was updated after publication with additional information about Meta plans.