My approach to creative projects combines my expertise in spatial design, curiosity for emerging culture, and love of creative technology and interaction. With a talent for team leadership and managing complex projects, I’ve collaborated with Oscar-winning filmmakers, innovative technologists, and transformative companies to create culture-shifting products, stories, and experiences. I’m currently pursuing a masters degree in interactive media and technology at NYU ITP/IMA to broaden my expertise and ability to lead teams across human-interface design, brand design, and interactive technology.

In 2020, I joined Meta as a Creative Director on the Brand Experience Design Team. I led multi-disciplinary teams (internal and agency) in unique, critical company investments horizontally across all apps (IG, FB, WA) and hardware (Quest, Portal, Ray Ban Stories). I co-led a XFN team from concept to delivery of the first Meta Store, championing an experiential-first model. I worked closely with product and engineering teams to craft new but familiar modes of engagement and interaction with AR and VR products including the Quest VR demo experience which scaled globally through third party retail. 

As a leader within the Meta brand design team, I helped define critical elements of how the brand was conceived and introduced to the world. 

More recently, I worked with a team within Google for a two month sprint to help guide the design phase of Google I/O 2024. I co-led immersive experience design, AI / Gemini product integrations, and spatial strategy, helping usher the project through senior leadership and into fabrication. Core to this and other recent work is the unique privilege of crafting human-interfaces that allow AI technologies to be unveiled and demoed for the first time.

My love of experience design continues at home, where I spend my time building and renovating living spaces with my partner. Our love for craftsmanship and the old way of building has led to the development of a small, slow-growing design and hospitality business in New York’s Catskill Mountains, which has (at times) included two rental cabins, a small farm, a co-working space, and a coffee shop.

Armed with a degree in plant science and philosophy, my earliest professional experience was on a tomato farm where I was motivated to improve access to quality, organic, heirloom food crops – a passion that I hold close to this day. My love of plants and my desire to move to NYC led me to a job in landscape architecture where I developed my interest in design and the built environment. Not long after on a street in Brooklyn, I found myself awe-struck by the dimensionality, authenticity and verisimilitude of a Scorcese production happening around me. At that moment, I plotted a new course – set design. 

I still enjoy working in film whenever possible and have served as a production designer and art director for both motion and still photography projects. The most recent film I contributed to was The Humbling, directed by Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson, starring Al Pacino and Greta Gerwig. In 2014, I migrated from set design to the conception and execution of physical experiences and environments with the team at Invisible North, a NY-based experiential creative studio, where I helped build and helm the internal design team.

phansteve at gmail dot com
@stevenjosphan
IN/stevenjosphan