The Problem

Citibank is a 200 year old company with over 200,000 employees. Inherent to any company of this size are a legacy culture, legacy systems, and the communication barriers that arise from silos. Creating change at an organization of this size is incredibly complex and requires a thorough understanding of the existing culture, workflows, and platforms/solutions. What's more, we conducted the entirety of this project virtually as our client was based in New York, and our team (DC + Baltimore) was social distancing due to COVID-19.

The Process

We reviewed Citi’s primary research documents to better understand the culture, operating structure, existing platforms, and the state of collaboration and innovation at Citi. We then interviewed employees from a variety of roles and geographic locations to verify themes we had identified in the research. We also compared five of the most used collaboration platforms at Citi to visualize their strengths and gaps in the offerings. Taking all this data together, we learned any solution would need to require light employee investment, have a simple, attractive UI, and address the cultural feeling that innovation inherently requires big ideas or projects.

To synthesize our data and guide our ideation, we worked with the client to refine a persona and journey map to represent the flow of a new idea at Citi. That journey map helped us identify 3 strong areas of opportunity for Citi: Idea Development, Building a Team, and Testing. We decided that it would be most helpful to focus early in the journey (on idea development) because solutions for the later steps wouldn't matter if new ideas did not have the best chance of developing.

The Outcome

Our solution was Citi Loop -- a platform where employees can issue micro-challenges (Loops) of any topic for feedback, thoughts, and comments from colleagues. E.g. What do Gen Z'ers value in a credit card rewards program? Based on an issuer's #tags for the Loop, co-workers with relevant expertise from around the company are recommended by the platform to be brought into the Loop. Once Looped in, employees are guided through a quick and easy response process where they are able to easily create a group chat or Microsoft Team with their fellow Loop-mates to share their thoughts.

We took inspiration from social platforms like TikTok and Quora to encourage idea sharing and collaborating across silos. We looked to addictive elements from video games like loot boxes and leaderboards to encourage engagement. Further, we imagined the leaderboards as part of larger admin view for managers and senior leadership. Quarterly summaries of Loop issuance, engagement, and completion could be sent to company leaders to show them where the innovation hot spots are in the company -- and which areas might benefit from encouragement.