Meta has officially appointed Alan Dye, a veteran creative leader who spent nearly two decades shaping the visual identity and user experience at Apple, to oversee a newly established creative studio within its Reality Labs division. This announcement was made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg through a series of posts on Threads on Tuesday, marking a significant strategic expansion of Meta’s design and innovation infrastructure.
Zuckerberg explained that the purpose of this new studio is to cultivate a design-forward culture within Reality Labs—Meta’s research and development hub dedicated to immersive technologies—and to define what he described as “the next generation of our products and experiences.” Through this initiative, the studio will not merely focus on aesthetics or product form, but will aim to merge creative expression with cutting-edge technological advancement. By appointing Dye to lead the endeavor, Meta is signaling an intensified effort to align sophisticated design thinking with its rapid innovations in artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality.
In his posts, Zuckerberg elaborated that the studio would serve as a crossroads where design, fashion, and technology intersect. He envisioned a future where intelligence itself—artificial or augmented—becomes a core design material, one that can be shaped, refined, and applied with the same nuance as color, texture, or form. This concept challenges conventional notions of design by treating AI as a malleable creative medium that can enhance human capability and create experiences that feel natural, intuitive, and deeply personal. According to Zuckerberg, the abundance and sophistication of this new form of intelligence open up profound opportunities for human-centered innovation across all of Meta’s platforms and devices.
The overarching goal behind the creation of the studio, Zuckerberg continued, is to elevate the role of design within Meta’s organizational structure. To achieve this, the company seeks to assemble a team of specialists whose expertise encompasses craftsmanship, creative vision, and “systems thinking”—an approach that integrates hardware, software, and user experience into a single cohesive narrative. These experts, he said, would bring decades of cumulative experience in building iconic, industry-defining products that seamlessly merge artistry and engineering.
Under this initiative, Alan Dye will collaborate closely with several other respected design leaders. He will report directly to Meta’s Chief Technology Officer and Reality Labs Head, Andrew Bosworth, reinforcing the close relationship between the company’s creative and technological branches. Together, this team will serve as the foundation for Meta’s evolving design philosophy, which centers around thoughtful innovation and the creation of meaningful user experiences.
Dye himself is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in Apple’s modern design history. Since taking leadership of Apple’s Human Interface Design studio in 2015, he has helped define the timeless simplicity and elegance that characterize the company’s software and hardware aesthetics. His contributions include guiding the design direction of landmark products such as the Apple Watch, the iPhone X, and the Vision Pro headset—a diverse range of devices that demonstrate the fluid integration of physical form and digital function. Under his stewardship, Apple pioneered new interactions that reimagined what technology could feel like at a personal, tactile level.
More recently, Dye played a pivotal role in developing Apple’s “Liquid Glass” design language—an interface aesthetic that introduces sophisticated transparency and depth, making digital elements appear lighter, more dimensional, and more emotionally resonant. His team also contributed to Apple’s ongoing work in the realm of smart home hardware. According to Bloomberg, which first broke news of his transition to Meta, this expansion in design scope hinted at Dye’s growing interest in designing for immersive, interconnected systems—a direction that aligns closely with Meta’s ambitions.
Zuckerberg also noted that Dye will not be joining Meta alone. He will be accompanied by other distinguished design leaders, including Billy Sorrentino, another seasoned creative from Apple, as well as Joshua To, who currently heads interface design efforts across Reality Labs. Additional collaborators will include industrial design lead Pete Bristol and the metaverse design and art teams under Jason Rubin. Together, these individuals represent a convergence of diverse expertise—from industrial design and interactive interfaces to digital art and immersive world-building—collectively advancing Meta’s mission to fuse technology with creativity at every level.
Zuckerberg framed this initiative as part of Meta’s broader push into AI-driven devices, such as next-generation smart glasses, which he believes will redefine the ways humans interact with technology. He characterized the moment as the dawn of a new era, one in which wearable devices empowered by artificial intelligence will not only transform how people engage with digital environments but also fundamentally reshape social interaction itself. Despite the vast and transformative potential of these innovations, Zuckerberg emphasized that the new studio’s central focus will remain on intentionality—creating experiences and products that are intuitive, emotionally attuned, and designed to genuinely serve people’s needs rather than overwhelm them.
This appointment follows another strategic hire earlier in the year, when Meta brought on Ruoming Pang, a leading Apple engineer who previously oversaw the company’s AI models team, to help build out Meta’s newly formed Superintelligence Labs organization. The addition of Pang, and now Dye, underscores Meta’s deliberate recruitment of top-tier design and AI talent as it positions itself at the frontier of human-centered, intelligent product design.
Apple, when approached for comment by Business Insider, did not issue a response. A Meta spokesperson, meanwhile, pointed reporters back to Zuckerberg’s public statements on Threads as the authoritative source on the announcement. For those wishing to share tips related to this story, reporter Pranav Dixit can be reached via email at pranavdixit@protonmail.com or over Signal at 1-408-905-9124. The publication reminds sources to use a personal email address, a nonwork Wi-Fi network, and a nonwork device when communicating securely, in accordance with its digital safety guidelines.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-hires-apple-design-leader-alan-dye-reality-labs-studio-2025-12
