Alan Dye, VP of Human Interface Design at Apple, is Headed to Meta

Alan Dye, Vice President of Human Interface Design at Apple, is leaving the company after 19 years. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is reporting that Dye is headed to Meta, where he will become the company’s new Chief Design Officer starting on December 31.

Dye may not be very well known to the public, but Apple CEO Tim Cook emphasised his major influence on the company’s products in a message to Bloomberg confirming his departure. “Steve Lemay has played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999,” Cook said. “He has always set an extraordinarily high bar for excellence and embodies Apple’s culture of collaboration and creativity.”

During Apple’s annual developer conference in June, Dye appeared on camera to introduce Liquid Glass, the company’s new design language that rolled out across all of its platforms in September. “This is our broadest software design update ever,” Dye said at the time. It lays the foundation for new experiences in the future and, ultimately, it makes even the simplest of interactions more fun and magical,” the exec added.

According to Gurman, Dye’s design chops can be observed across various Apple products, including the Vision Pro headset, the Apple Watch, and the iPhone X. More recently, Dye’s team has been focusing on new smart home devices, and this work will now continue without his leadership.

At Meta, Dye will be tasked with developing the company’s consumer devices, which include virtual reality headsets and smart glasses. “With the Dye hire, Meta is creating a new design studio and putting him in charge of design for hardware, software and AI integration for its interfaces,” Gurman reported today.

At Apple, Dye will be replaced by Stephen Lemay, a designer who “played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said today. “Design is fundamental to who we are at Apple, and today, we have an extraordinary design team working on the most innovative product lineup in our history,” the exec added in its statement shared with Bloomberg.