It is indeed very cool to occasionally have your flight delayed but be seated next to a design researcher at Microsoft. It’s even cooler to spend the rest of the flight discussing everything about design – the good, bad, ugly, and speculative parts – with them.

It was the end of November 2025, and I had to fly from Mumbai to Hyderabad to attend the World Design Summit with my dad. Indigo's incompetency led to the flight being delayed again (ironically, the CEO of Indigo was present at the Summit), and my frustrated self was settled quickly with a window seat as though it were compensation.

Beside me came and sat a lady who seemed very sweet; we both acknowledged each other and sat. I had my book with me but was feeling too nauseous to read anything, so I just started doomscrolling on my phone. The lady, intrigued by the Gen Z spectacle, was very kind to start a conversation related to design. Me being the conversation fanatic that I am, I was so excited to talk about design and started blabbering about how I'm a design student. It turns out she was the principal design researcher at Microsoft Hyderabad. I had to be so nonchalant about my excitement, but it was very evident from my enthusiasm. What followed was a 2-hour-long plane journey with this wonderful woman where we discussed all things design, from design students' capabilities and anxieties of being replaced by AI, the advent and future of AI, my academic projects and the pedagogical landscape of design education in India. Engaging in critical conversations with such brilliant women makes me feel so inspired and fulfilled in my discipline. After the flight, we exchanged our goodbyes and LinkedIns and funnily remarked on the 2 hours feeling like minutes.

Fast forward to January, and I get a text from the lady on the plane on LinkedIn inviting me to give a 15-minute lightning talk at Microsoft's internal event – the annual international UXR Day conference 2026 on 11th February – being hosted by Microsoft, Hyderabad. She was very interested in my articulations of using game design as a UX methodology in various contexts like wars and railways.

I was deeply honoured to be the first design student invited to the virtual event who got to geek out about two of her dearest academic projects that she built with her dearest teams. Through my talk titled "Designing for the Uncomfortable and Uncertain”, I unpacked my confrontations with unconventional narratives by exploring what it means to design for behavioural changes in unusual contexts like wars and railways (through ARES and Sirf Rail Nhi).