Shruti Meshram Drew

I'm an immigrant who came here with no network, so I had to build everything from scratch, and I've had great mentors along the way. The best advice I've received has been about taking on additional responsibilities, switching industries, and switching different businesses. That really helps you build on a lot of skills that you would not otherwise have the opportunity to build if you're stuck in one path, in one type of job, or one product itself. Sure, you can become an expert in that, but with AI, you need to have a massive skill set. Otherwise, you can be automated, essentially. So focusing on acquiring a breadth of skills is something that I have chosen because I like to work with a lot of things, but it's also something that I've repeatedly been told by my mentors.

Design is evolving a lot, like, every day. So anybody who's entering the field now has a golden opportunity to try out different tools and create their own process. As a designer, you can really shape how a product works, not just how it looks. So having some knowledge of product management, engineering, and business in general is really helpful, especially when you're working in tech. But also don't forget that the customer is still the most important entity that you are designing for and building for. That is something that I don't think is ever going to go out of fashion - talking to customers and doing your research. Because that is what helps products win. So stick to the fundamentals of design, but also embrace the new age tools and essentially change your process.

Right now, designers in general are afraid that their job will be automated or they're not required. I feel like that is not true. The value that designers bring to a company is more than just designing pretty UI. It is also empathetically thinking about the user, trying to think about the goal, and how do we get there. A lot of our roles are merging, so product management and UX design is merging a lot because of how things are unfolding. Another challenge is just keeping up with all these advancements in AI, and there's just so much content out there that one needs to grasp in order to move ahead in your career. There isn't a silver bullet that you can just do this, this, and this and you'll get a job at one of the top companies. You kind of have to find your own path and strengths through that, and right now, there's just a lot of chaos. So just focusing on what your strengths are, and then building upon that, and adding AI to that is something there's not a lot of guidance around, which I think is very challenging for people, because everybody's overwhelmed.

Honesty is the best policy - that is something that I follow. Empathy is also very key when you're a designer, and also as a person, because the more empathetic you are, the more tuned in you are into what the needs are, and you can sort of make things better that way. Curiosity is very, very crucial, especially if you want to stay relevant today. Curiosity about how things work, how to build things, just in general what's going on, what do people need. And then assertiveness for women, particularly, it's still a very male-dominated world, so women should be more assertive about what they want and what their opinions and advice is. I'm a pretty assertive person, so I want other women to be that way, because then they can achieve what they want with that.