Portal 1 | Portfolio

SELECTED WORK

Portal

Designing Facebook’s First Consumer Hardware Experience

Background

Through a design partnership with Codazen, I led experience design initiatives across several programs at Facebook (later rebranded as Meta) that spanned nearly six years.
One of the earliest engagements involved redesigning the UX for Portal — Facebook’s first consumer hardware product, developed within the company’s experimental Building 8 division (later known as Meta Reality Labs).
Portal was the world's first smart video-calling device with an AI-powered camera that automatically pans and zooms to keep people naturally framed, allowing users to move freely around the room while remaining centered on screen.

My Role

At the request of executive stakeholders, I stepped in to lead UX design after the initial agency engagement struggled to align with engineering feasibility and launch timelines.

Partnering closely with Codazen engineers and product leaders, I redesigned the experience around usability, performance, and real implementation constraints. I also introduced a rapid prototyping workflow that allowed stakeholders and engineers to interact with the product early, accelerating alignment and enabling faster iteration toward launch.

Impact

Flawless launch and earned stakeholder trust and confidence.

300+ design refinements validated through rapid prototyping, avoiding costly mid-sprint development changes
Interactive prototypes allowed stakeholders to experience the product in context, accelerating alignment and executive approvals
Earlier engineering feasibility testing reduced implementation risk and improved design–engineering coordination
Program brought back on schedule and launched successfully
Rapid prototyping became a core collaboration tool for aligning design, product, and engineering throughout development

The streamlined process proved highly effective and led to a long-term Facebook/Meta partnership with Codazen, resulting in 40+ additional projects over the following six years