Ian Sands

Founder & Managing Partner, Pilot Lab With a background in user experience design and technology R&D, Ian Sands has 20 years of experience inventing, designing, and envisioning next-generation digital solutions and strategies. Ian is the founder and managing partner of Pilot Lab, a technology concept lab working out of Seattle and London, specializing in the invention of software and solutions that reimagine the customer experience. At Pilot, Ian and his team of designers and engineers are unified by their passion for generating impact through smart design with their cross-functional lab that develops people-centric design solutions. Throughout his career, Ian has founded a variety of organizations and companies, including Pilot and Intentional Futures, and founded the Envisioning effort for Microsoft at the intersection of business challenges and emerging technology. He brings a deep expertise in user experience, research and development, and design leadership together to create intuitive, smart solutions.

Founder & Managing Partner, Pilot Lab

With a background in user experience design and technology R&D, Ian Sands has 20 years of experience inventing, designing, and envisioning next-generation digital solutions and strategies. Ian is the founder and managing partner of Pilot Lab, a technology concept lab working out of Seattle and London, specializing in the invention of software and solutions that reimagine the customer experience.

At Pilot, Ian and his team of designers and engineers are unified by their passion for generating impact through smart design with their cross-functional lab that develops people-centric design solutions. Throughout his career, Ian has founded a variety of organizations and companies, including Pilot and Intentional Futures, and founded the Envisioning effort for Microsoft at the intersection of business challenges and emerging technology. He brings a deep expertise in user experience, research and development, and design leadership together to create intuitive, smart solutions.

Activities for Ian

Speaker | ID Technique Deep Dive | 2022

Closing the Gap: Designing for Digital and Physical Experiences

This session is a conversation between Ian Sands, managing partner at Pilot Lab, a digital experience design studio, and Principal Designer and Manger Tony Siebel, about how the work we do as industrial designers has shifted to blur the lines between physical and digital experiences.

What unites us as designers, as we embrace new tools and skillsets in a changing industry? How do we build and grow our ID skillsets as digital design becomes an integral part of our work? Are we all really “Product Designers” at the end of the day? Ian and Tony will share their perspectives as leaders of design teams in both digital and physical spaces, and how we can use our superpower as ID generalists to grow our digital design skills to create better, more user-centric, holistic experiences—no matter the medium.

In this session, you will learn:

About the core similarities, differences, and parallels between Industrial Design and Digital Product Design—the impact of UX and UI’s rapid growth on ID, and what unites us all as designers. You’ll unlock what all the different industry terminology really means for you as a practicing industrial designer or design leader trying to integrate digital product design to deliver more holistic user-centered experiences.
What are the key frameworks, skillsets, or perspectives needed by an Industrial Designer looking to grow their Digital Design toolbox, and how to keep up with the growth of Extended Reality and Virtual Reality
How to integrate research thoroughly into the Product Design process—whether physical or digital. How can you better guide projects from a user-centric lens, leaning on research methodologies ranging from heuristic evaluations to usability studies and beyond; how can digital and physical product designers evaluate their designs effectively; and what tools should you be using to make sure your work is really meeting your user’s needs?