Led qualitative and quantitative UX research initiatives across Epic Games' full product portfolio, including Fortnite Battle Royale, Fortnite Festival, LEGO Fortnite, Unreal Engine, Fall Guys, Rocket League, and Rocket Racing, delivering research both remotely and in-person.
Drove the end-to-end research lifecycle independently, making critical decisions across participant screening, test plan development, data analysis, and executive-ready report delivery.
Managed research teams of 5–6 analysts, strategically selecting and deploying methodologies, including in-depth interviews, surveys, usability testing, think-aloud protocol, and A/B testing.
Translated complex research findings into strategic, actionable insights within a fast-paced team of 25+ UX and playtest researchers, directly shaping product decisions and elevating the player experience.
Influenced game development strategy by partnering with designers, producers, and product managers to embed UX research at critical decision points throughout the development lifecycle.
Mentored several junior UX lab analysts, helping them understand the nuances of various UX research methodologies while enabling them to confidently contribute to projects and make a meaningful impact to the games.
Fortnite is one of the world's most played games, offering a constantly expanding universe of battle royale, creative, and social experiences across platforms.
Established and led UX research as a solo practitioner, independently architecting research strategies that directly influenced game design decisions and elevated the player experience across AAA rhythm game titles, including FUSER.
Exercised full methodological autonomy in selecting and deploying the optimal research approach for each initiative, spanning interviews, surveys, think-aloud protocol, and usability testing, ensuring findings were precise, actionable, and aligned with project objectives.
Served as a strategic research partner to product managers, proactively identifying research needs and embedding UX insights at critical junctures throughout the game development lifecycle.
Owned and oversaw the full operations of Harmonix's playtest lab, managing all equipment, infrastructure, and facility readiness to ensure seamless execution of every research engagement.
Developed and managed user research budget to help cater to specific project needs.
Maintained accurate and up-to-date records of all lab equipment, ensuring full inventory visibility and operational.
Owned the end-to-end scheduling process for student lab access, managing competing demands and optimizing availability across the facility.
Provided hands-on guidance to students across active research projects, training them in the use of usability software and biometric equipment to enable independent, confident research practice.
Designed and facilitated weekly workshops to upskill students on new lab equipment and software, fostering a culture of continuous learning within the research environment.
The Experiential Technologies Lab at the College of Arts Media and Design is a state of the art resource for AR/VR, biometrics and user testing research and teaching.
Responsible for making video tutorials and guiding other students to use the bio-metric equipment.
Managing the Usability Lab at Northeastern University and keeping the equipment available for students at all times.
Responsible for managing and handling the following bio-metric equipment: Eye-tracker and Mobile Eye-tracking Glasses, Shimmer 3 GSR and Shimmer 3 ECG/EMG, B-Alert X10 EEG, VR and AR Headsets, Theta V 360 Camera.
Built a 1 minute experience on Microsoft Mixed Reality Headset Hololens and showcased it at PAX EAST 2019.
Riddhi Padte is a student in Northeastern’s Game Design and Science Graduate Program. She is currently completing her second co-op at the CAMD Experimental Technologies Lab, where she has a variety of responsibilities. Though she is still in the first two months of this role, she has already learned a lot from the experience. We had the opportunity to hear about her experience working in the virtual reality lab thus far. Read more about it, below!
Contributed to the development of Mutazione, a commercial narrative game, implementing automated playtesting to support iterative design validation.
Conducted remote playtesting sessions and semi-structured interviews, delivering structured reports that informed key design decisions.
Research findings helped developers assess whether players understood the game's core narrative context and mechanics, directly shaping the player experience.
MUTAZIONE is an adventure game where the juicy personal drama is just as important as the high-stakes 'adventure' part of the story.
Designed and implemented a logging system and game levels for a platformer in Unity, integrating AWS DynamoDB for backend data storage and retrieval.
Collaborated with a cross-functional team through weekly syncs and version-controlled workflows via GitHub.
Developed heatmaps to visualize player trajectories, surfacing spatial behavior patterns to inform level design decisions.
Desire Path-Inspired Procedural Placement of Coins in a Platformer Game
Interned at startup and worked on the front end of websites using HTML, CSS (Bootstrap) and Javascript.
Implemented bootstrap concepts to create flawless web experiences.
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