RISD Alumni

Impact
Within just the first four months of launching, the new alumni site had reached the goal of doubling traffic from the previous site. With a monthly average of over 60 alumni-tagged content items, the site has generated more than 15,000 unique visitors—more than half the overall total number of RISD alumni. And with site visitors from over 115 countries, more than RISD has alumni in, the new site has proven to be an impressive tool for increasing the institution’s engagement with both it’s alumni community and with the RISD community at-large.

Discovery
Through research and interviews with dozens of RISD graduates and affinity group leaders from a range of years, we learned that alumni communities were actually quite active, albeit in silo-ed social media platforms, on stand-alone micro-sites, in closed email and calendar groups, and in the alumni-specific XYZ print magazine.

The Story Stream
The concept is structured around a stream of stories that can be submitted by alumni or pushed out directly by the Office of Alumni Relations. Organizing all content into a single stream gives a more accurate view of just how vibrant and active the alumni community is, generating excitement and interest. The stream supports a range of content types, from news, articles, and class notes, to events and exhibitions. Content can also be solicited from alumni in response to specific campaigns organized by the Office of Alumni Relations like “RISD Weekend” or “Lifelong Learning.” Faceted search and filter options were also added to make finding content related to specific majors, years, alumni, or interests intuitive and easy.