Hello, I'm Stef Smet.

I've worked in tech for over a decade. I love learning and solving complex problems for people in simple and intuitive ways — passions that first drew me to tech and still drive me today.

I started exploring technology at a young age. By 11, I was building my first websites. My interest in design was sparked by skateboard culture, while a passion for programming interactivity developed soon after.

I'm currently a Product Designer at Instagram New York.

Previously I co-founded Yello, a venture-backed startup that initially explored personalized stories for children to help them cope with everyday life situations. We later pivoted to building tools to help developers test, collaborate, and deploy AI into their applications.

Prior to that, I spent 6.5 years at Meta. I was a founding member of the team that created Spark AR (now Meta Spark), which became one of the largest platforms for mobile AR with over 600,000 creators and +2 million effects published on Facebook and Instagram. During my 5 years on the Spark AR team, I led design for Spark AR Studio and its integration into Instagram, Messenger, and Oculus (now Meta Quest). Most recently, I worked as a Principal Product Designer at Instagram, where I helped creators make a living from their passion — leading design for more forward-looking initiatives such as the first version of NFTs on Instagram.

And before that, I co-founded True Story, a product design studio where we partnered with a wide variety of companies, from large corporates such as Bausch+Lomb and Nikon to early stage startups.

Away from my screen, I swap pixels for peaks — snowboarding down mountains or kitesurfing open waters.

Follow along on Instagram — I'm not very active on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you want to connect, send me an email.

Talks

Patents

  • US 10825258
    Systems and methods for graph-based design of augmented-reality effects
  • US 10698744
    Enabling third parties to add effects to an application
  • US 10541001
    Video highlights
  • US 10452226
    Visual editor for designing augmented-reality effects
  • US 10402955
    Long Exposure Filter
  • US 10360736
    Visual editor for designing augmented-reality effects
  • US 10592066
    Visual editor for designing augmented-reality effects and configuring rendering parameters