Meet Saurabh Nimsarkar, Senior Staff UI/UX Product Designer at Wisk, based in Mountain View, CA. As part of the Product Design team, Saurabh helps shape the passenger experience for our Gen 6 aircraft, with a focus on accessibility, safety, and making autonomous flight intuitive for everyone. His work spans everything from testing physical mock-ups and researching passenger needs to designing interfaces and exploring how passengers will board the aircraft, access safety information, and get assistance when needed.

Outside of work, Saurabh is a passionate artist and illustrator who enjoys sketching and exploring the Bay Area’s creative communities.

1. Can you tell us a little about your role at Wisk and what your day-to-day looks like?

My work brings together experience design, design research and design strategy. I help shape how people will experience the Wisk journey. My day could involve running research sessions, testing physical mock-ups, developing interfaces or facilitating design strategy workshops with cross-functional teams. A big part of my role is helping us identify which problems we should be solving and question the assumptions behind our decisions.

2. Can you share a little about your career journey and what led you to designing eVTOL aircraft?

I started as an engineer, but art and design have always been part of my life. I studied design at IIT Bombay and later at ArtCenter College of Design. My work has taken me from industrial design at Godrej & Boyce to mobility innovation with the Mayor’s Office of Los Angeles, followed by Kitty Hawk’s Flyer program in 2019 and Wisk in 2021.

Across that journey, I became increasingly interested in how research shapes design, and how design, in turn, generates new questions and informs strategy. I’m also passionate about transportation sociology: how mobility shapes people’s everyday lives, relationships and access to opportunities. Autonomous aviation brings those interests together, opening up new possibilities while raising questions about how people will experience, trust and live with this form of travel.

3. What’s your favorite part of working with the Design team at Wisk?

I get to be a generalist and wear different hats. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work across passenger experience design and research, as well as interface design for RSS and the SCOPE team. I enjoy moving between those perspectives and seeing how they inform one another. What makes that especially rewarding is the team’s culture of respect and openness to different viewpoints. It makes the work fun and gives us room to question, learn and create something worthwhile together.

4. What’s a project or milestone at Wisk you’re especially proud of?

I’m especially proud of helping establish accessibility, design research and design strategy as part of how we shape the passenger experience. Bringing people with disabilities into the design process has challenged our assumptions about boarding, understanding information, asking for help and responding in an emergency. Those insights have informed work ranging from boarding concepts to safety information and passenger guidance.

For me, the meaningful part is seeing participants’ experiences influence design decisions. Much of the credit belongs to the people who shared their experiences so openly, and the colleagues who helped turn that learning into design.

5. What’s most important to you when designing the passenger experience?

Helping people feel informed, supported and respected. Autonomous flight introduces an unfamiliar relationship between people and technology, especially when there is no pilot onboard. We need to understand what gives passengers confidence, how they recognize when something needs attention, and how they know help is available.

I also care about who gets to shape that future. People bring different abilities, experiences and expectations, and involving them early helps us question our own picture of what a good experience looks like. I want us to create an experience where people can travel with dignity, independence and, ultimately, a sense of joy.

Thanks for sharing your story, Saurabh, and for the thoughtful perspective you bring to designing a safe, accessible passenger experience at Wisk!