Her Story
About Ridhi
My typical day involves working closely with UX designers and focusing on problem solving, identifying key challenges for both the company and customers in the food ordering and online ordering space. A lot of my time goes into user research, talking to our end users and customers, and identifying their pain points and frustrations. I spend time thinking about solutions that are a middle ground between technical feasibility and great user experience, something that will be very intuitive for our end users but also technically possible for our engineering team given our technical infrastructure. I collaborate with UX designers to find which design works best from both a consumer experience perspective and an engineering standpoint. I brainstorm design ideas, finalize designs, and then write user stories and epics to bring those designs to life. I also do a lot of user acceptance testing to make sure that whatever changes we're pushing to production is high in quality. It's an overall journey from user research to really bringing a product to life and working with engineers to build that software.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Ridhi
01What do you attribute your success to?
Being a woman, it's really important to be financially independent, so I think that was definitely a motivating factor for me. Coming from a developing country like India, where women don't have as much freedom as women in Western countries, I really wanted to go out and explore the world, and I knew that the only way I can do it is if I excel in my academics. If I get a good GPA and have a good overall profile, it will be easier for me to get admission in a good university, and a good college makes it possible to land a good job. I'm not saying that college is absolutely important, there are a lot of people who drop out and succeed, but in my case, I felt that it would be easier for me if I go to a good college, then landing a job would be easier for me that way. I would say that being financially stable, and just wanting to go out and explore the world, I always wanted to come to the U.S., and the only way for it would be for me to excel in my academics, or just excel in whatever I did. So that was a motivating factor for me.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Personally, for me, I would say that immigration has been a big challenge, because working as an immigrant in the country can sometimes be hard, especially when you are on a work visa. There are times when in the past I was interested in a job, I still could not interview for that position because the company does not sponsor work visa. That can be disappointing sometimes when you cannot just interview at any job that you are interested in because of sponsorship-related struggles. That has been a challenge, and then just getting accustomed to a culture and a new country. Initially, my communication skills were not that strong, but right now, working with a diverse set of people, I think that's one area where I have really flourished. In India, people have said that you need to sit at your desk and just do the hard work, but when I moved to the US, I realized that communication plays a big part. You have to advertise what you're working on, you need to have that visibility. That's something that I'm really learning to do, because the truth is that just hard work doesn't always take you to the top. You also need to market your brand and have a brand for yourself.
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