DIALEXA EDU

A Student Mentorship Program Providing Real-World Experiences

At Dialexa, our methodology revolves around solving problems, excelling at our crafts, and providing innovative experiences.

The principles of these methodologies encourage and help Dialexans create their own initiatives where there are no hoops to jump through. It’s all about fostering more opportunities to excel, be innovative, & solve problems wherever they may apply.

Problem solving in the real world is the overarching theme of what this student mentorship program would grow to focus on. In fact, just as we launched Dialexa EDU in the Spring of 2020, the circumstances of COVID-19 challenged us all with a serious real-world problem to navigate through, ultimately providing the students an opportunity to learn how to pivot & always be prepared for the unexpected.

Follow along on our journey from early concepts of this mentorship program to the Inaugural Dialexa EDU Presentation Day!

The Concept & Value of Our Student Mentorship

Having a sports & athletic background, the importance of coaching & mentorship has been ingrained in my being. As a newcomer to the product design & technology industry, I didn’t see many real-world mentorship opportunities, especially from the companies that advertise themselves as innovative and user-centric. After joining Dialexa, I knew we could fill this industry void by creating and executing a real-world mentorship program. I quickly found a team who was just a passionate to bring this idea to life.

IDEA

Create a student mentorship program that emulates how we solve problems and find solutions at Dialexa by bringing them into our real-world product design environment.

VALUE

• Identifying Dialexa as a premier destination within the DFW technology, design, and engineering community for thought leadership and education
• Providing a real-world learning experience for the local universities and the next generation of agile, passionate product designers
• In-turn, building a pipeline of potential Dialexa Interns & Employees

TEAM

3 Product Designers + 1 Engineering Lead

A group of diverse Dialexans who :

• have experience teaching students at the collegiate level
• can conceptualize, define, & create our visual identity
• can network connections in educational departments
• are eager to be innovative & make things happen

From Concept to Creation

FALL 2018

The first item of business was to connect with college professors. First to gauge their interest and secondly to explore the feasibility of the idea as a whole.

Fortunately, to begin that process we had Dialexans who were recently students and were able to provide points of contact to the following DFW-area professors:

Cassini Nazir • University of Texas at Dallas (UTD)

Michael Gibson • University of North Texas (UNT)

Jan Ballard • Texas Christian University (TCU)

From the moment we reached out to explain what this mentorship program would entail, the professors were entirely onboard. Their excitement & willingness to work with us from Day 1 was a crucial aspect of motivating our team not only to make this program valuable for Dialexa, but for each of these professors, their students, and schools as well.

In the coming weeks and months, our team outlined & prepared an initiative that would invite design students from each school to partake in a half-day workshop at Dialexa. Here they would learn about our approach to solving problems, as well as day to day roles. Meanwhile, our Professor partners introduced this new opportunity to their students & selected the ones they felt would most benefit.

— — —

SPRING 2019

In March 2019 we hosted the first Dialexa Student Mentorship Day, welcoming 8 students from the three schools as well as Professor Cassini Nazir (UTD) to spend a morning with us. Shortly after treating them to breakfast & an office tour, our team facilitated a few workshops to introduce the students to new concepts, deliverables, research & design techniques, & best practices for how Designers, Developers, & Quality Engineers collaborate to solve problems at Dialexa.

Innovating the Pilot Program

SUMMER 2019

With a highly successful output for the initial mentorship venture, we were excited with the result, but hungry to take this concept to the next level.

We invited the professors to our office to partake in an innovation workshop. Together we completed an Innovation Canvas exercise to ideate new ideas, approaches, and ways we could format this program to mutually benefit ourselves, Dialexa, professors, students, and schools.

The output of these exercises provided valuable perspectives and insights which helped define the direction of the mentorship program. This new direction would allow us to innovate this concept into a sustainable program that we could host on an annual basis.

A few main driving outputs of the combined effort that shaped the purpose of the program were;

• Cross collaboration of students from different disciplines

• Incorporating the element of business into design & development

• Providing examples of scenarios that occur in real-world projects

Defining Dialexa EDU

FALL 2019

After distilling all the findings from the innovation workshop with the professors, our team gathered to put it all together. We wanted to approach this program with a few things in mind :

• Solve a real-world problem

• Guide the students through sprints as we do on projects

• Incorporate design, development/engineering, & business

• Organize the program such that it doesn’t become a burden for us or the students

From these early conversations, we knew the best way to frame this program for the students was to focus on the Experiences, Not the Outputs. We wanted to teach and mentor in a way that provided us all with experiences we could enjoy and learn from, rather than focusing on deliverables or outputs that were time-consuming and stressful.

After we had a direction set in motion, we set forth creating visuals and branding this new program. Within minutes, our resident professor Dialexan hit the nail on the head by suggesting Dialexa EDU. The team agreed unanimously, and Dialexa EDU became its own entity.

— — —

EARLY 2020

With our brand & identity aligned, we workshopped and white-boarded problems/topics we could use as potential prompts, as well as how Dialexa EDU would be formatted.

What we eventually landed on was an 8-week, Research, Design, & Development sprint-based program that would guide students through the ideation and creation of a digital product:

• An official Kickoff Day would invite the students & professors to our office where we would introduce them to the process & breakdown tasks to complete each sprint

• 3 sprints over 8-weeks with virtual check-ins with us as team liaisons for each school

• A concluding Presentation Day where the students would return to our office & present their experience through the program as well as the work they conducted for the digital product

Day 1 with the Students and Professors

FEBRUARY 2020

A year and a half of envisioning, networking, planning, piloting, validating, & executing had culminated in a group of 15 students hand-selected by their professors to participate in the Inaugural Dialexa EDU Student Mentorship Program. The group included sophomores, juniors, and seniors ranging from different disciplines and areas of study such as:

• Design
• Human Computer Interaction
• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Business

For this initial group of students, our Dialexa team selected a relevant, local, real-world problem to serve as a prompt for each team to approach in their own unique way.

PROMPT :

In order to keep up with innovative cities around the states, Dallas is making their way to zero waste. Dallas wants people to be able to easily reduce their waste, see the benefits, & be incentivized to do so. Hopefully this initiative will spike the interest in things like composting, community gardens, recycling, & other environmental concerns.

Over the course of the day it was great to see how much fun everyone had, and even more exciting to see how quickly the students picked up our exercises. It was clear this wasn’t the first time they conducted empathy maps or sketching workshops, a testament to their professors and school curriculums.

Despite Kickoff Day being the end of a long journey creating this program, it was just the start of this 8-week experience. We were all very excited to start the mentoring process through the sprints & guide the students towards solving the prompt in a unique way that would showcase the diversity of their approaches.

COVID-19 Pivot & Presentations

MARCH 2020

Just after the students had completed Sprint 1 to research their markets and define their users, the pandemic hit, instantly put a halt to the program and the entire world. After a week of quarantine, our Dialexa team discussed our options and decided we would offer the students the opportunity to continue the program remotely, or put it on pause indefinitely.

We were extremely energized when all 3 teams indicated they wanted to continue and were still committed to our original presentation day in April. With that timeline in place, we helped the students communicate openly about how they could complete their tasks remotely and what pivots would need to be made. A consensus was made to take a more high level approach to the sprints than originally outlined.

Given the many unknowns about our global situation, this was a prime demonstration for the students to experience a legitimate real-world problem, not just in real life, but in a professional capacity as well. Despite it serving as an inhibitor for our initial envisions for the program and our preparations for a really fun presentation day, it in turn strengthened the format of the program and our value as mentors.

— — —

APRIL 2020

With the efforts of the students & their mentors, Dialexa was proud to invite the professors and about 20 Dialexans to the first Dialexa EDU Student Mentorship Presentation Day, hosted via Zoom.

After speaking to the entire group about how we adjusted expectations and continued the program remotely through the peak of the pandemic, we handed the reigns over to the students to present their outputs and solutions. Each team’s presentation was followed by comments from their respective professors as well as Q&A.

The teams did a masterful job of identifying why their product would make an impact in the market, how it would be designed and developed, and the problems they would address.

As we concluded the presentation day, the professors individually conveyed their appreciation for everyone’s perseverance through the program and our efforts to bring this idea to life. We at Dialexa thank the professors for this opportunity to help mentor their students and are looking forward to watching them grow and become future product design leaders!

What’s even more exciting is this is all just the beginning of EDU, an entity we look to innovate upon and evolve for years to come.