Social Surfaces for Quest

Bringing Messenger to Quest meant rethinking text communication for VR, balancing the established Messenger brand with the unique constraints of immersive input. This work became the foundation of a broader effort to unify Quest's fragmented social surfaces (People, Chats, and Calls) into a cohesive system.

Role

Senior Product Designer (IC)

Challenge

Unify fragmented social surfaces into a coherent system that works across multiple identity graphs, and design a messaging client rethought for immersive input.

Contribution

Designed a full Messenger client for VR with new interaction models for quick messages and voice dictation. Led the Unified People Tab across multiple OS releases, including identity graph merging, ranking logic, and profile switching between identities. Designed encrypted messaging flows and call UI including party creation. Built the Figma component system for the social platform and raised the quality bar across the team.

Impact

The Messenger for VR client was approved by leadership up to VP level and featured at Connect alongside Quest 2 launch. Established a foundation for Quest for Work's strategy. Unified social surfaces, increasing discoverability and concurrency in a small graph.

Messenger calling — integrating Messenger's clients to increase the chances of a small graph playing together.

Messenger for VR interface — core interface elements of the Messenger client in virtual reality.

People tab — a unified surface for finding friends, starting parties, and sending quick messages.
People tab — a unified surface for finding friends, starting parties, and sending quick messages.
Card concepts — activity indicators, life events, and social activity surfaced to drive coordination.
Card concepts — activity indicators, life events, and social activity surfaced to drive coordination.
People cards — information hierarchy for identity and a framework for presence indication.
People cards — information hierarchy for identity and a framework for presence indication.
RLDS component
RLDS component — the people card in Meta's Reality Lab Design System.