Li-Chen Miller wasn’t even a Meta Platforms Inc employee when she started working to fix the company’s video-recording sunglasses. Miller was working at Microsoft Corp in late 2021 when she purchased a pair of Ray-Ban Stories, the first version of Meta’s souped-up sunglasses. But her excitement about the novel idea was quickly overshadowed by all the ways she thought they could be improved.
So she dashed off a detailed – and unsolicited – list of suggested fixes to Alex Himel, Meta’s head of wearables. "She wrote me an email that articulated what she thought was good about the device and what was promising, and then a longer list of things that she would improve,” Himel said, recalling that he agreed with most of the ideas. Miller’s email and her meticulous attention to detail landed her a job the following year at Meta, where she now oversees products for the entire wearables division, including a full line of the Ray-Ban glasses she previously critiqued.
Once more of a novelty, the glasses are becoming increasingly important within Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has spent billions of dollars researching and building futuristic wearable technology, a bet on his belief that augmented reality glasses, which can overlay images and text on a user’s view of the physical world, will be the next major computing platform. One day, the company has suggested, they may even replace the phone in your pocket.
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