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Michael Sayman

Michael Sayman

Design Prototyper

Interaction, motion, and AI-driven experiences across wearables, iOS, and the web — from first prototype to billions of users.

Staff UI Engineer & Prototyper at Apple · San Francisco, CA · michaelsayman@me.com · linkedin.com/in/sayman · github.com/michaelsayman

Meta AI · 2024–2025

Meta AI ring & voice embodiment

Lead prototyper and engineer for the Meta AI ring/logo/voice UI components across iOS, Android, and Web — shipped inside Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, the Meta AI app, and meta.ai. Includes SDF-based 3D ring motion built on custom Metal/OpenGL shader math, and centralized component libraries adopted across surfaces.

Shipped to 3B+ users

My prototype harness, cycling the ring through its states: Default, Listening, Responding, Connecting, Disconnected, Thinking.

Watch: my LinkedIn post on building the reimagined embodiment (Metal on iOS, OpenGL on Android, WebGL on web).

Wearables · Meta

Display glasses & Ray-Ban Meta

Built Unity-based prototypes for the Meta Display Glasses and contributed UI on the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses AI display — tuning motion and visuals to compensate for unusual lighting and apparent focal distance.

Unity · C# · Interaction & motion for AI displays

Through the lens of Meta Ray-Ban Display: an info card with the Meta AI ring glowing in the display
Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses and neural band Wearing Ray-Ban Meta glasses Close-up of the Ray-Ban Meta camera and frame

Watch: the ring running on the Ray-Ban Display glasses, from my LinkedIn.

Instagram · 2014–2017

Instagram Stories

Designed and prototyped early UI concepts for Instagram Stories — camera, composer, and ephemeral consumption — that informed the template later used across Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger Stories. Earlier prototyping work also influenced Instagram Highlights.

700M+ daily users

Instagram Stories at launch, August 2016: the first Stories row, camera, and drawing tools
Instagram Stories at launch: the feed, the story viewer with its seen list, and the drawing screen
Facebook Stories at its March 2017 launch: camera effects, Direct inbox, and a story over the feed Messenger Day launch art, March 2017: 'good vibes' over three phones of Day photos WhatsApp Status launch panels, February 2017: doodled photo status that disappears in 24 hours Instagram Stories camera update, November 2016: shooting a Boomerang in Stories

The template spreads: Facebook Stories and Messenger Day launch in March 2017, WhatsApp Status in February 2017 — and Instagram's own camera grows Boomerang and hands-free modes (November 2016).

AI Interaction · Meta

LLM context injection & Side Chats

Prototyped a new LLM context-injection pattern (prompt/context engineering) with a simulated conversation engine and inject-on-demand tooling that let PMs, researchers, and content designers iterate on prompts and behavior live — work that informed Side Chats shipping in Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

Named inventor on patent applications

Meta AI app home screen Meta AI inside Messenger: a chat with the ring avatar, an AI-generated image, and a sourced answer

Founder · 2022–2024

SocialAI

Founded SocialAI (Friendly Apps). Led product, design, engineering, and go-to-market for a private AI app exploring social-networking-style interfaces for user-intent signaling — conversation engine, real-time markdown rendering, and long-context memory design, built in Swift.

$3M seed raised

Coverage: The Verge on SocialAI.

SocialAI app icon: a stack of speech bubbles on black
SocialAI
App icon & identity · Friendly Apps
SocialAI launch banner: 'A private, personal, social network just for you' over three phones
SocialAI in use: his profile post answered by AI followers SocialAI's follower picker: color-coded AI archetypes — Supporters, Trolls, Critics, Thinkers, Skeptics

Identity: a stack of speech bubbles — one voice, endless replies — on black, with a highlighter-yellow accent. The cast is the iconography: color-coded AI follower archetypes you choose when you post.

Google · 2017–2020

Emojishot & early Shorts concepts

Lead designer-prototyper on Emojishot (Area 120), a charades-style game built on gesture-driven transform composition — plus early functional iOS prototypes for YouTube Shorts, a contextually-aware Google Assistant, and communications features for Google Nest and Home Hub.

Area 120 · App Store release

Emojishot app icon: a laughing emoji face on a yellow-to-orange gradient
emojishot
App icon & identity · Google Area 120
Emojishot gameplay: describe a word using only emojis — composing a 'snowcone' Emojishot home screen with the lowercase emojishot wordmark and game turns

Identity: the laughing-face mark on a yellow-to-orange gradient; a magenta-to-purple frame carries the game UI.

YouTube Shorts at its September 2020 launch: the Shorts camera and shelf

Founder · 2013–2014

4 Snaps

Built 4 Snaps, a photo-guessing game for iPhone, end to end — front end, back end, and launch. It climbed to #21 overall free in the App Store, passed 600,000 registered players and 10 million photos taken, and was named an App Store "App of the Day."

Apple Design Award winner · WWDC 2014

4 Snaps gameplay: four photos and a letter bank — guess the word 4 Snaps compose screen: take 4 pictures or upload them from your photos A 4 Snaps game collage from launch week, July 2013

Watch: "Introducing 4 Snaps" — the trailer (Vimeo).

Club Penguin Cheats app icon Where it started: Club Penguin Cheats, my first app — on the App Store in 2010, when I was 13.

Experience

Recognition: Apple Design Award (4 Snaps, WWDC 2014) · 3 issued design patents, plus AI interaction patent applications · Forbes 30 Under 30 (Consumer Technology) · Author of App Kid (Penguin Random House) · TEDx speaker

Contact: michaelsayman@me.com · linkedin.com/in/sayman · sayman.com

Download portfolio (PDF)

Facebook & Instagram years

From the era

Michael Sayman with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook HQ, 2013 Typing at Facebook in 2014, in a Be Bold tee, Android figurine on the desk His desk at Facebook HQ in 2016, with reaction stickers and a zen garden Michael Sayman at Instagram HQ at night, 2017

With Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook HQ (2013) · typing at Facebook (2014) · my desk at Facebook HQ (2016) · Instagram HQ at night (2017).