Meta has recruited two of Apple’s top user interface designers, Michael Matas and Mike Rockwell, to lead a sweeping redesign of its software interfaces across devices like Quest headsets and Ray-Ban smart glasses. The move aims to address longstanding criticisms that Meta’s UIs are clunky, visually inconsistent, and confusing to navigate, particularly in its metaverse-facing products. Their arrival, and the decision to have both report directly to VP of Design Elizabeth Reid, signals a high-stakes attempt to elevate Meta’s design standards as competition in AR, VR, and wearables intensifies.
Meta’s Design Overhaul Initiative
Meta has created a new design team with a mandate to unify user interface elements across its hardware portfolio, from Quest headsets to Ray-Ban smart glasses and mobile apps. According to detailed reporting in Meta Poached Apple’s Top Design Guys to Fix Its Software UI, the company is treating this as a foundational reset rather than a cosmetic refresh, with leadership explicitly focused on eliminating the fragmented experiences that have accumulated as different product groups shipped their own interpretations of menus, icons, and controls. For users who jump between a Quest home screen, a Horizon Worlds lobby, and a companion app on an Android phone, the goal is to make those transitions feel like a single coherent environment instead of a patchwork of unrelated interfaces.
Internal feedback from Meta’s metaverse projects has repeatedly flagged inconsistencies in navigation patterns and visual aesthetics, particularly inside Horizon Worlds, where menus, cursors, and interaction models can shift abruptly between spaces. The new initiative targets those pain points directly, prioritizing a common design language for gestures, typography, and system chrome so that a user who learns how to dismiss a notification in a Quest 3 environment can apply the same muscle memory inside a Ray-Ban glasses overlay or a Messenger window. Strategically, Meta is moving after a series of software updates that tried to tweak layouts and add onboarding tips but did not resolve core complaints about intuitiveness, and the company is now betting that a top-down redesign led by seasoned interface specialists will have a more visible impact on retention and daily engagement.
The Key Hires from Apple
At the center of this shift is Michael Matas, a former Apple UI designer whose work on iOS interfaces and apps like Maps helped define the look and feel of early iPhone software. Reporting shows that Matas has been tasked with leading Meta’s mobile and headset UI redesign, giving him direct influence over how Quest home environments, system dialogs, and smartphone companion apps present information and respond to touch or gesture input. His track record at Apple, where he helped refine the balance between visual richness and performance on constrained hardware, is particularly relevant as Meta tries to keep Quest interfaces responsive while layering in more complex 3D elements and AI-driven features.
Alongside Matas, Meta has hired Mike Rockwell, Apple’s former head of spatial computing design, who brings experience from Vision Pro prototypes and other internal AR efforts into Meta’s Reality Labs division. Rockwell’s background in spatial interfaces, where windows, controls, and media float in a user’s physical environment rather than on a flat screen, positions him to shape how Meta’s AR experiences feel when accessed through Ray-Ban smart glasses or future mixed reality headsets. Both Matas and Rockwell joined Meta in early 2023 and report directly to VP of Design Elizabeth Reid, a structure that gives them a clear line into executive decision making and signals that Meta wants to import Apple’s polished design principles into its own ecosystem rather than layering them on top of existing patterns.
Apple’s Response and Industry Ripple Effects
The departure of Michael Matas and Mike Rockwell from Apple raises questions about design team stability inside a company that has long treated interface craftsmanship as a core differentiator. While Apple has not publicly detailed internal restructuring in response to their exits, the loss of a former iOS UI contributor and an ex-head of spatial computing design to a direct competitor underscores how contested senior design talent has become. For Apple’s remaining teams, the shift could mean redistributing responsibilities for spatial computing and interface experimentation, particularly as the company continues to refine Vision Pro software and related AR initiatives that depend on tightly integrated hardware and UI work.
Across the broader tech industry, Meta’s decision to poach high-profile Apple designers illustrates an escalation in the talent wars around UI and UX, especially in AR and VR where intuitive interaction models are still being defined. In earlier years, Meta leaned more heavily on in-house talent that grew up around Facebook’s social apps, but the move to recruit leaders with deep experience in mobile operating systems and spatial computing suggests a recognition that the next phase of competition will be fought on design quality as much as on raw hardware specs or AI capabilities. For startups and mid-size companies working on headsets, smart glasses, or mixed reality platforms, this kind of high-end hiring by giants like Meta and Apple can make it harder to attract senior designers, potentially concentrating influence over interface norms in a small number of large firms.
Expected Outcomes for Meta’s Products
For Quest headsets, Meta is expected to prioritize smoother gesture controls, clearer visual hierarchies, and more predictable system behavior as the redesign rolls out. The company has faced criticism that basic tasks, such as switching between games, joining a Horizon Worlds event, or adjusting privacy settings, require too many steps or hide key options behind inconsistent icons. With Matas overseeing mobile and headset UI, Meta is likely to focus on reducing cognitive load by standardizing how users select, drag, and dismiss elements, while also refining typography and color contrast so that text and controls remain legible in complex 3D scenes. If successful, these changes could shorten onboarding for new Quest owners and make it easier for existing users to discover features like mixed reality passthrough or fitness tracking that are currently underused.
Ray-Ban smart glasses, which sit at the intersection of fashion, cameras, and ambient computing, stand to benefit from a more seamless integration of Meta’s AI features into their minimal interface. Today, users rely heavily on voice prompts and a small set of physical controls, which can make it difficult to understand what the glasses are doing or how to access captured photos and videos across devices. With Rockwell’s spatial computing background and Matas’s mobile expertise, Meta can experiment with subtle visual indicators, more informative companion app layouts, and consistent patterns for invoking AI assistance so that the experience feels less like a collection of hidden tricks and more like a coherent system. Better usability on the glasses, combined with a cleaner Quest interface, could improve user adoption by addressing one of the most persistent critiques of Meta’s hardware, that the software feels bolted on rather than thoughtfully designed from the ground up.
