Rijul came to UX research the long way around and that’s exactly what makes the work interesting.
Growing up taking apart computers and putting them back together, technology was never intimidating. But it was psychology that felt like the real frontier. A Bachelor’s and Master’s in Psychology later, Rijul spent two years at DRDO’s psychological research labs, where rigorous human research met high-stakes applied problems, studying pilot cognition, redesigning knowledge systems, and learning what it actually means to understand how people think under pressure.
The move to UX research wasn’t a pivot. It was a convergence. A place where the technical instinct and the psychological depth could finally operate in the same room. Rijul describes it simply as ikigai, the overlap of what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can’t stop doing anyway.
At MIT Institute of Design, Rijul teaches Applied Social Psychology, Accessibility, Design Research and Creativity & Innovation to both B.Des and M.Des students. Courses are designed the same way good products are: around the people who actually use them. The goal isn’t just to transfer knowledge. It’s to send students into industry with portfolios, not just degrees.
Outside the classroom, you’ll find Rijul either on a motorcycle finding out where a road goes, deep into a tactical shooter, or being managed by a cat.