Designers in Residence Program – Highlight of 2020

With the arrival of COVID-19  we had to iterate once again, this time taking the mentoring rounds digital. It is important to mention that we’ve been incredibly lucky to have had the support of the amazing HCD community in Sydney and Melbourne. No matter what, they always were there at our Industry Nights as experts, at our events as thought-leadership speakers, at our courses as Instructors, mentors and clients for students. So when the pandemic struck, they stayed with us and kept giving back to the community no less than ever! 

Again, what we find most important in our work, is to keep listening to our students and everyone involved in the courses. Through the internal and external feedback, we realised that the way we organised the final step of the course experience – feedback and networking with the industry professionals, was not sustainable anymore. And this is how our newest project was born.

Launch of Designers in Residence

We launched Designers In Residence (DIR) program with the huge support from Matt Tsourdalakis, a Design Lead and Consultant passionate about design leadership and having an insanely inspiring idea of transforming Melbourne into the capital of the UX knowledge and leadership. Being used to dreaming big at Academy Xi, we teamed up with Matt to gather the first cohort of DIRs to  mentor our full-time students throughout the 10-week program.

Believing in that value of diversity of experience, we chose to focus not only on industry veterans but also engaging our talented alumni and early specialists. With this in mind, we’ve built the the program the way that it would support not only our students but also our DIRs in their growth as mentors and people leaders. Filled with numerous learning sessions for the mentors, check-in sessions and active slack community discussions, this program is designed to empower mentors to share their own experience and pass on their knowledge and expertise to the next generation.

Throughout the 10 weeks, our mentors have fortnightly catch-ups with the students helping them in setting their mentee’s short and long-term goals by guiding them on the way to achieving them through practical steps and advice. Besides the sessions with their mentees, mentors also have regular meetings with the Lead DIR and each other where they discuss different techniques, tools and approaches to mentoring. 

At Academy Xi, we care about every single student walking through our, now virtual doors and we want to be able to support them not only while they’re studying with us but also after they finish the course. DIR is our first step to building a greater Xi community with a vision of become a learning hub for our alumni and other designers in Australia.