Meta: Creative Lead, Sound & Haptics — Meta’s Family of Apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Meta AI) Shaping sonic UX, product identity, and brand expression for products used by billions

Instagram for TV — Sonic Logo

Summary
A short sound with a large responsibility: to translate Instagram’s identity from the phone to the living room—delivering clarity, presence, and emotional resonance in a single moment.

Situation
With the launch of Instagram’s TV app, the brand was entering a new context: the living room. Unlike mobile—where sound is optional and often muted—TV demands presence. This created a gap: Instagram had no singular, ownable sonic expression capable of standing alongside category-defining moments like the Netflix “Ta-dum.” At the same time, a nascent sonic identity was emerging across mobile surfaces (Reels, notifications, UI), but it lacked a unifying, flagship expression.

Task
Design a sonic logo for the splash screen—the first and only sound in the TV app—that could:

  • Represent Instagram’s evolving sonic identity

  • Translate a mobile-native brand into an immersive, shared-space environment

  • Deliver emotional impact and brand recall in under two seconds

  • Perform across a wide range of playback systems (TV speakers, soundbars, Atmos setups)

  • Compete directly with best-in-class streaming platform audio branding

Action
I led the sound design of this highly confidential project, partnering closely with art directors and creative leadership across Instagram Design Studio and Growth.

  • Concept development: Anchored the sound in the tonal language of existing product assets—especially the Reels end card—favoring an organic, rhythmic, slightly idiosyncratic character over synthetic polish

  • System thinking: Designed the logo as a natural extension of Instagram’s mobile sonic palette, creating continuity while scaling up for the spatial and acoustic expectations of the living room

  • Full-spectrum composition: Built a mix that activates the entire frequency range:

    • Sub-bass to physically energize the room

    • Warm, enveloping midrange (piano textures designed to reflect and “bloom” in space)

    • High-frequency transients to punctuate and sharpen the brand moment

  • Spatial mix: Delivered in Dolby Atmos, ensuring dimensionality across premium home setups while retaining clarity on constrained TV speakers

  • Iteration + alignment: Developed and refined multiple directions, ultimately pitching to senior Instagram leadership and aligning cross-functional stakeholders in an accelerated timeline

Result

  • The final sonic logo shipped as the primary brand moment for Instagram’s TV app across platforms including Amazon Fire TV, Samsung, and Google TV

  • Strong UXR performance across multiple testing rounds, with consistent feedback highlighting memorability, emotional impact, and perceived “premium” quality

  • Adopted by Meta marketing teams and featured in campaign creative—extending beyond product into brand-level storytelling

  • Established one of the first truly ownable, scalable sonic brand assets within Instagram’s ecosystem

Meta: Senior Interaction Sound Designer leading cross-functional partnerships on software and hardware audio experiences for Quest VR

Meta Quest 2 and Quest Pro

As a Senior Designer focused on VR System interactions, I shipped sounds for VR software and hardware: system-level features in Quest and Quest Pro, spatial audio to support personal safety features in Horizon, and I was leading the aesthetic direction and sonic prototyping work for our group on the future of hands-first interactions in VR.


Quest charging sounds

With the Charging sound for Quest Pro and it’s charging dock, we needed to communicate to the user in off-head scenarios that the connection with the wireless charging dock was successful. We needed to boost user confidence in successful charging since we’d received feedback that the headset connection with the dock interaction wasn’t always clear. The language of the sound thus needed to communicate connection and charging, needed to take advantage of spatial animation that showed off the speakers, and needed to convey through sonic palette and expression the premium identity of Quest hardware. We were increasingly interested to use hardware and UI system sounds to differentiate between Meta software products and the more expensive line of Meta hardware offerings, particularly now that the VR lineup included a pro and consumer line.

The Quest Pro charging sound needed to also be harmonious with the Quest controller charging sound, which emanates from the sophisticated haptic motors that can replicate musical frequencies. I designed the headset sound to be musically harmonious with the existing controller sound, and in our internal UXR study the headset chime interaction tested so overwhelmingly positively that we shipped it immediately to users and then set about to designing a similar yet different sound for the Quest 2. The differentiation here had to do with the need to define the Pro and Consumer level products from one another, as well as tie in with the current palette of Quest VR system sounds with which 12 million Quest 2 owners were already familiar. Here you can hear the slightly more playful palette for Quest 2 vs the slightly more full frequency sheen of the Quest Pro asset.

VR Alarms and Timers app

There’s a desire from the Assistant product team to ship a suite of Alarm/Timer sounds that aligns more with customer expectations around the set of sounds you’d get with a new phone. Previously, there was only one timer sound in Quest. Moreover, we wanted to offer sounds that would offer personalization but also benefit different use cases, some with a higher signal level that would cut through loud immersive app experiences, vs low signal and soft edged sounds that might appeal to users who don’t often play loud immersive games and would perhaps prefer a calmer alarm experience.

The video here demonstrates my 4 assets we shipped following a couple rounds of revisions with our cross-functional partners.