Ben Ashman

Ben Ashman

Product Designer in San Francisco

Work Experience

2021 — Now
2018 — 2021
2014 — 2018
2013 — 2014
2011 — 2012

Projects

Ongoing
Special Projects at Cruise

Trust, delight & differentiation, future vehicle programs, ridehail, quality, AI, and more.

2021
Portal 2.0 at Meta Reality Labs

Three years after its initial launch, we found Portal supporting more relationships and more ways of connecting than we ever could have imagined. In response, I led a redesign of some of Portal's core systems and features—including a new ambient home screen, a discovery framework, and a communal identity model—in order to better support this new normal and lay a strong foundation for the future.

2019
Portal TV at Meta Reality Labs

Portal TV brings the best of Portal to the biggest, most immersive screen in your home. As a member of the core team tasked with defining the end-to-end product, I was responsible for developing a design system, navigation paradigms, and a number of product experiences. As part of this project, I also led a small team in collaboration with Buck to define a unique visual language for Portal, which lives on in the product today.

2018
Portal at Meta Reality Labs

As one of the first designers on the Portal team, I had a hand in almost every aspect of the product, including design systems, app and identity frameworks, settings, and socially-connected ambient experiences. This work was critical in enabling Portal to move from concept to ship-ready in under a year. Portal launched in late 2018.

2015
Search at Facebook

Every day, search helps billions of people find friends, photos, news, and content from across Facebook. During my time on the team, I helped evolve the end-to-end search system, including recent searches, typeahead, the search results page, and filters.

2014
Trending News at Facebook

I helped grow Trending on Facebook, creating systems to support breaking news, topic categorization, and live eyewitness accounts from people on the scene at newsworthy events.

Side Projects

Ongoing
Peas

AI-powered recipe manager for iOS.

2020

A simple coffee brew ratio calculator for iOS.

2012

A little bottle that collects data.

Education

2006 — 2008

Contact

LinkedIn
GitHub
Instagram