Citi Alumni Group

Establish a home for Citi employees and Alumni to network, communicate, and gather.

Requirements

Citi needed a website for their alumni where users could message each other through contact lists, receive corporate communications, perks, benefits, and notifications, RSVP, get tickets for events and participate in charity activities. The site needed content management for admins with the ability to post news and content, create tickets,s and manage events, and recruit members. The site needed to allow for multiple permission levels for management and members and be translated across the globe for a multi-language experience.

Findings/Research

We met with the Citi Alumni team to find out how they were currently performing similar initiatives. We learned what they needed from the site from an admin POV. We also spoke with several Alumni members to gather what would be helpful to them in the context of Citi’s offering. We quickly learned that what Citi wanted was very similar to LinkedIn. We could use that as a source of inspiration, take learnings from a competitive perspective, and define what to and what not to do for Citi. Working with a lean UX process, we took our competitive research, interview findings, and requirements and rolled up our sleeves.

Design

I started by creating various “happy path” user flows, allowing me to start and generate a content map. Once I had a catalog of all the content and functions we needed, I created a sitemap outlining the navigation structure, areas of the site that had CMS output, and a matrix of access permissions for content managers and users.

Once the sitemap was approved, I began to wireframe the site pages; I developed a small set of design principles, including keeping structure and layout on-brand and simple. Straightforward navigation and eliminating as much clutter as possible while creating visual chunks of content and information would create ease of use and readability. The demographic of the site ranged from 20-80-year-old users.

A lot of time was spent streamlining input forms, site tools, and functions. I created a user hub with various widgets that would allow members to create a homepage with info relevant to them–anything they didn’t need could be hidden out of view. I also created various duplicate sets of wireframes for language translations, especially when content reads from right to left. We reversed the entire site to accommodate appropriate language layouts. After completing all of this, I moved on to designing the screens while aligning with the Citi brand.

Results

In the end, after only a few months of work and simultaneous development, the site launched globally and was instantly adopted. Citi was able to perform all their requirements with ease, and the Alumni Members seamlessly onboarded to the platform for many years of success.