Frances Lai
 

RESEARCH / product design

 
 
 
 
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what i’m doing now

research / product design

For the last 8 years, I have been researching and designing the future of AR/AI interaction. I led research design projects at Meta Reality Labs Research, envisioning AR interactions on 10-20 year horizons. I translated speculative futures into near-term research directions, and brought architectural systems thinking to how those concepts were developed and communicated.

 
 
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META | research design

REALITY LABS - RESEARCH

As a research designer at Meta Reality Labs Research, I worked on teams envisioning mixed reality interaction on a 10-20 year horizon, and defining the research questions that would help us get there.

I led projects end-to-end across multidisciplinary teams: from framing research directions and facilitating studies, through to concept development and experiential prototypes. Teams included research scientists, software engineers, UX researchers, prototypers, technical program managers, and other research designers.

The research I led resulted in working prototypes, 9 patents, and 2 peer-reviewed papers published at ACM DIS.

 

Image courtesy of Meta Reality Labs Research

 
 

 
 

CHATHAM LABS | research SCIENTIST

HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION RESEARCH & DESIGN

At Chatham Labs, I co-founded a research studio delivering interaction design research for clients exploring AR on 15+ year timelines. I led research design on multidisciplinary teams from ideation through to working prototypes.

Outside of client work, I contributed to 2 peer-reviewed papers published at CHI, and mentored interns through their first design research project.

Image courtesy of Meta Reality Labs Research

 
 

 
 

university of waterloo | M.arch thesis

massive-scale agency

My thesis proposed a digital platform giving individuals visibility into the embodied energy behind their everyday consumption, making the invisible costs of lifestyle choices legible and shareable.

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