Paul Edwards, Head of Advanced Design at Airbus, explores how design creates desire, drives sustainability, and what happens when AI momentarily mistakes passengers for luggage.

Designing the Sky: Turning Engineering into Experience

Design connects technology, service, and emotion – in aviation as in software. It makes highly engineered systems feel simple and human. At Airbus, this vision takes flight at 35,000 feet.

Paul Edwards, Head of Advanced Design, has spent more than a decade shaping how people experience flight. His team’s mission goes beyond interiors: to bring coherence, comfort, and meaning into one of the most technically constrained environments imaginable. Modern cabin design is no longer about isolated components but about shaping the entire journey. When everything aligns, passengers move intuitively, crews work efficiently, and the experience feels effortless.

This approach comes together in Airspace, Airbus’s cabin design language. Airspace defines how an aircraft should feel through light, material, and flow, ensuring that every model shares the same calm and clarity. The principles extend from the smallest A320 to the massive A380, proving that scale does not have to come at the cost of comfort. The same is true beyond aviation: both Airbus and SAP operate in complex systems that demand consistency at scale while still creating experiences that feel personal and human.

Design, for Paul, thrives in ambiguity. It is never fully predictable and that is where creativity begins. “Design is really good at creating desire,” he says. It captures imagination and emotion in ways data alone cannot. In aviation, that means turning function into anticipation and transforming a technical product into a memorable experience. Passengers now recognize not just the airline but the aircraft they fly on. The goal is to build an aircraft brand people actively prefer – one that stands for comfort, ambience, and experience. Across industries, the shift is clear: people no longer buy products, they buy how something makes them feel.

That same mindset drives sustainability. At Airbus, it is a design constraint, not a slogan. Every gram of weight and every material choice affects fuel, emissions, and comfort. Lighter structures and smarter systems, like pre-selected meals to reduce waste, show how efficiency and experience can reinforce each other. Inclusivity follows the same principle. A recent project on accessible lavatories used AI to generate early insights but relied on real passengers for validation. As Paul explained, AI helps reduce setup costs but does not always save time. One example was when the model placed passengers in overhead compartments instead of their seats. Technology can broaden exploration, but judgment and empathy keep it on track.

What is happening in aviation reflects a broader shift across design disciplines. People are more aware of the spaces they move through and the experiences they have. They notice the air quality, the sound, the lighting, and how they feel when they land. Experience has become the main differentiator, and intelligent technology now plays a growing role in shaping it. AI helps uncover patterns and possibilities, but human sensitivity still defines what feels right. Consistency across aircraft types and brands is now a competitive advantage. That challenge feels familiar for SAP designers as well, who build journeys across many different products and touchpoints.

Same sky, different system

What happens in airplane cabins is not that different from what happens in digital ecosystems. When a seat, a galley, and a crew interface are not aligned, passengers feel it. The same happens when software services fail to connect smoothly. Design’s role is to make those invisible links feel natural and consistent.

The SAP Design System is a strong example of this thinking in practice. Just as Airbus uses its Airspace design language to bring consistency across aircraft families while still allowing airlines to express their own brand, the SAP Design System provides a unified foundation for products across the company. It ensures that every solution feels connected, yet flexible enough for different teams and use cases. Consistency here is not about uniformity – it is about creating trust, clarity, and a smoother journey for every user.

Finally, the conversation around AI felt particularly relevant. At Airbus, Paul’s team uses AI as a practical tool to work more efficiently and explore ideas at lower cost. It helps identify passenger groups, create personas, and map journey experiences, turning complex data into early visualizations that guide design decisions. But as Paul emphasized, AI is not a shortcut. It saves resources, not reflection. Every result still needs to be tested and validated with real passengers. The same thinking applies at SAP. AI can support designers by analyzing research, detecting patterns, or checking accessibility across products, yet meaning and trust still depend on human judgment. In both worlds, AI optimizes the process, but people define the experience.

Ultimately, design is not about standing in the spotlight but about enabling others to succeed – engineers, developers, business teams, and above all, users. Whether applied to a cabin or a cloud platform, the aim remains the same: to make complex systems feel simple, human, and worth remembering. Everything leads back to the user experience.