SUMMARY
As the leader of a team building under-the-hood prototypes, Agustya M. keeps accessibility central.
We recently sat down with Agustya M., a director of hardware engineering at Meta who focuses on wearable devices. He is passionate about the potential of high-tech wearables like the Orion prototype and Ray-Ban Meta glasses to connect people who have previously been at a disadvantage when navigating certain spaces and situations.
Keep reading to learn why this work is particularly close to his heart, and why taking both a design- and engineering-led approach to innovation results in beautiful, useful and usable products — for everyone.
Agustya M. has worked in the consumer electronics space for most of his career and has a deep passion for technology and accessibility, fueled by his personal background.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your career.
My personal history has informed my career. My mom is blind, and others in my family and I were born with issues impacting our vision as well — hence my unusually thick glasses. My youngest child also has vision challenges, even after multiple eye surgeries during his first year of life.
How people with different abilities use technology for better access to the world has always been top of mind for me. Growing up, I saw how technology enabled my mother to have a connection to the world that wasn’t possible before, but also how technological advancements that were not designed in an accessible way risked leaving her behind.
A young Agustya (R) and his mother and her guide dog (L) explore a submarine together. Her experience as a blind person has greatly influenced her son’s career.
What is your role at Meta and how did you get here?
I’ve been in the consumer electronics space for most of my career. Prior to Meta, I helped build consumer electronic products like the iPhone and HoloLens. At Meta, I lead a cross-disciplinary team of hardware and software engineers. We mostly work on early-stage offerings that won’t be released to the public, but this work ultimately informs our roadmap for products like Meta Quest and Ray-Ban Meta glasses as well as the Orion prototype.
Agustya leads a cross-disciplinary team of hardware and software engineers who work on under-the-hood prototypes, like these early versions of Orion.
Is it challenging knowing that many of your projects won’t come to full fruition?
It’s actually why I took the job. Sure, shipping a product and seeing people use something you worked on is really exciting. You get a lot of pride in going through an entire product shipping cycle. But, big picture, the ideas we’re prototyping at this stage will shape how humans will experience the future through technology. We can also iterate and move extremely fast. It’s fun and invigorating.
Tell us more about the intersection of accessibility and your work.
The technology we’re experimenting with and building has the potential to unlock the world for people like my mom. For example, a lot of people who are blind or have low vision sometimes don’t leave their homes because they struggle to navigate the world. They may feel isolated and are statistically underemployed. When they do go out, they may be dependent on using a cane or guide dog when riding the bus or going to the grocery store.
Ray-Ban Meta glasses and the Orion prototype have the potential to better include people like my mom in the company’s mission to build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible.
How so?
Imagine a pair of artificial intelligence (AI) glasses being able to remind you where you set your keys down or about a medical appointment that your spouse mentioned the other day. These types of experiences are helpful to everyone, from busy parents and CEOs to people with disabilities or age-related memory loss through AI’s ability to watch, listen and predict.
We keep hearing the phrase, ‘accessible design is good design.’ What are your thoughts on this statement?
I agree, but I also think good design is accessible design — it goes both ways.
Can you share some examples of how good design is accessible design?
Take old phone models. On touch-tone phones, a caller could feel the button and hear the click as they pushed it. Even on rotary phones, callers relied on the physical sensations of the holes, raised bump on each number and the dial movement. Incorporating this tactile feedback wasn’t required by regulation to help the disabled, it was just good design — pure and simple. Today’s mobile phones have haptics and sound design that provide this same tactile output, and settings that allow people to dial these elements up or down based on their preferences.
Generally, the more input you give a person about what they’re doing, the better the experience is going to be. It’s this diligence and focus on quality that not only helps out people like my mom, but everyone.
It sounds like you have a deep appreciation for the role of design, especially as it relates to accessibility. Why is it important for designers and engineers to collaborate?
For the first year or two, my team was very much focused on engineering goals. But we really hit our stride when we formed a strong partnership with design. Our collaboration with the wearables design team, for example, helped inform not just how to build things, but what to build.
If your design focuses only on what looks and feels good without considering the laws of physics, you’ll likely end up overpromising and underdelivering. The product’s capabilities might sound really good, but you need to have the math to back it up. But without design, we don’t have insight on what people need and how people live. And ultimately, we’re building our technologies for people.
How have you seen this collaboration benefit Meta?
Our collaborations across engineering and design have led to stronger decisions and less waffling on pure technological specifications. While technology is important, we need to put people first — not the tech. A bunch of interesting technology thrown into a device might be compelling for an engineer to tinker with, but unless that technology unlocks something truly novel and compelling for the user that justifies its cost, it will not lead to a successful product.
Want to read more about accessibility design? In this story, product designer Caterina F. shares the role of design systems in creating accessible digital experiences.
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