Our goal
Australian red cross lifeblood is a government-funded organisation that is responsible for processing over half a million blood donations each year. Their promise is to provide a safe and secure and cost-effective supply of quality blood products and essential services to meet the need of their patients.
During covid, lifeblood was receiving up to 1000 cancellations with 43% of first time donors not rebooking for a repeat donation. To meet the needs of Australians they needed to see an increase of 45% of the blood donations in 2022.
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Our mission was to find out why?
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Meet my team
I worked alongside 2 other UX designers and we collaborated on all stages of the process with each of us taking a lead on different stages of the research and design process.
My role was to guide the ideation process and I was responsible for creating prototypes for testing.
Julianna Tong, Melbourne
Boon Kit Tan, Malaysia
Aline Alonso, Sydney
UX Designer
UX Designer
UX Designer
Our main Focus
Using a group discussion and a clear understanding of the brief, we divided our research into 4 focuses. It was important to understand the direction of the group, and this allowed us to do just that
Understand users who donate
Understand how the donation process works
Understand the reasons behind donations
Understanding user pain points along the process
How we understood the problem
To begin this journey we needed to understand how the blood donation and supply systems work. As someone who has never been exposed to the blood donation process it was important we understood what it is and how it is being managed around the world right now.
Market analysis
Competitive and comparative analysis
Contextual inquiry
User interviews
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Through various research methods, all aspects of the donation industry are analysed and bought to the next stage of our UX process. We were able to gather data from everywhere in the world and from all types of users.
First, we understood the market
Red blood cells have a shelf life of 35-42 days at refrigerated tempretures
3% of Australians give blood
Out of 118.5 million blood donations, 40% are collected from high-income countries
Australia is one of the biggest market players in blood donation
“So, how does a country that is doing so great...be better ? ”
What were the others doing?
Great initiatives around the world
UK Campaign
The blood services UK came up with a social media campaign entitled "Missing type". where they removed letters from street signs and newspapers. 30 thousand new donors registered during the week.
Blood Delivery in Rwanda
The country uses drones to deliver blood in rural areas. The drones are faster than cars and also reduced 67% of quantity of blood that expired and went to waste.
Maldivian app
In 2017, A crowdfunding idea for a social media app that users would be able to earn badges or rewards from strategic partners as incentives for donation blood.
Understanding Our Competitors In More Detail
On average it took 15 steps to register an account
It took Red Cross lifeblood 25 steps to register an account
Other ways to donate
The sign-up process was very similar to job-seeking websites and provided little to no feedback on what the process will be after you apply
Insights On The Field
We interviewed 33 people from online zoom interviews to donors at the lifeblood center, we wanted to understand the users behaviours and pain points that may have caused them to either have returned or stopped their donation experience.
It was interesting to see that although men donated more blood and woman donated more plasma the amount of people who donated were around the same.
What the users are saying
3 Core Questions
A talk with the manager of a lifeblood branch
Surprisingly we found that Covid was actually the busiest period as people used the place as a reason to meet up.
After the pandemic donations have dropped significantly due to the shift back to normal life.
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He let us know that it is very important to give their users the best experience when they first attend the clinic as that is the only way they can maintain a relationship for them to come back.
How we refined our research
Now that we have a set of qualitative data, what do we do with it? How do we synthesize our research?
UX methods were used to define our research and understand the core problem behind our users' problems.
Affinity mapping
Persona
Problem statement
Journey mapping
With these methods, we are able to condense our quantitative and qualitative data, helping us concentrate on and visualize the most important aspects of our findings. As a result, we were able to define our primary persona and begin ideation.
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Affinity Mapping
We used a process of affinity mapping to find our key insights and created 29 insight groups.
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Our goal here is the find common themes and trends that may inform our design direction.
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A prominent insight was that many users had altruistic values and wanted to help others wherever they could.
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Red cross lifeblood recommends a 3-month waiting period between donations.
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We found that most users do not donate regularly or 3 months apart.
Booking their donations or making an appointment usually requires an app or getting reminded in the clinic.
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Meet Peter
Our primary persona
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By synthesizing all of our research and understanding what the users want, need, do, and see, we developed the persona.
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Our primary persona Peter is someone who has donated before, he understands the importance of it but lacks the motivation to do it again although he wants to.
Problem statement:
“Peter needs to feel motivated to donate so that he can donate more regularly.”
The problem statement was created by taking into consideration all parts of our research and synthesis.
This marks the middle of our UX design process.
​Peters Journey
Taking into account Peter's current state, processes, and needs, we were able to map out his journey and visualise his pain points.
In a mapping exercise, we mapped out how Peter feels from when he books his first appointment, to when he shows up, to when he books the second.
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The outcome showed pain points during the last stage of the process “the rebooking”
Now, lets solve this problem.
Once we've identified our users' pain points and defined Peter's problem, we can create a possible solution. To achieve this, we followed a classic design sprint method, where we collaborated and brainstormed to our full potential
How might we
Crazy 8's
Defining the idea
Feature prioritisation
In the end of this process, we came up with multiple ideas that we wanted to develop, and after discussing and understanding each idea fully, we found the minimum viable product.
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1 / How Might We
During our first ideation meeting, we discussed ideas and potential solutions we could use to resolve Peter's problem based on our understanding of the problem statement.
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Our first step was to create a set of how might we statements that focused on specific ways we could improve Peter's experience. As a team, we voted on what we thought were the most essential ways to resolve the problem.
2 / Crazy 8s
Using the how might we's, we generated a round of Crazy 8s for each solution.
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Taking a minute per idea, we sketched out eight possible ideas to each question. Our initial ideas sparked our creative thinking, which led to us coming up with new ideas we had never thought of before.
3 / Defining the idea
Our chosen idea was a blood donation plan feature.
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Similar to a phone plan, we want to help users plan their year of donations with us.
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To understand the feasibility of our idea, we needed to further define its features, and so we compiled a bunch of ideas.
4 / Feature prioritisation
We then placed these features onto an impact and effort table to show what the most important features are to make this idea a reality. We chose these ideas based on the ease of implementation and the impact each offers.
The features within the highest impact and lowest efforts section generated our Minimum viable product
Our Minimum. viable product (MVP)
“Easy to book pre-scheduling feature for multiple appointments”
How do we make that a reality?
We now need to understand how the user interface may look after defining our idea. It was discovered through methods that let us visualize how a user might interact with a product and the decision points they might encounter along the way.
Task flow
User flow
Paper prototype
This will help us develop a design that is specific to the user and easy for the majority of users to access and use.
By using these processes, we were able to create a prototype that was ready for testing.
Task Flow
As part of our competitive analysis, we found that booking two appointments takes 17 steps.
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Based on our MVP we were able to create a task flow that simplified the steps. Users of our solution can schedule up to four appointments a year with an 12 step process, making the process more convenient and less time-consuming.
User Flow
From the task flow, we built our user flow.
This process helps us identify the screens and components we need to test and revealed crucial decision points that we may encounter.
Through this, we understood that there were 3 key decision points​
How we measured our user satisfaction
To make our design user-friendly, reliable, and functional, users must be able to read and interact with it. This is tested through our various rounds of prototyping to understand what users liked, disliked and what they are confused about.
Prototype testing
Using screens on Maze and Marvel, we were able to gather qualitative and quantitative data about how our design is currently functioning. The tests helped us understand how effective our design was during the ideation phase, and allowed us to reconnect with our users.
Paper prototype 1.0
We started with paper prototypes to test our idea.
The approach is faster and more accurate and allows us to test many different components before moving on to something that could take a long time to develop.
Pick a location
Manual selection
Auto selection
We tested 5 participants with the same scenario and task and found the following insights:
Likes
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Straight forward
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Intuitive process
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Easy to follow
Dislikes
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You said congratulations too many times
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Why is the reminder 3 days?
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Map was unclear, not sure where to press
Confusions
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Auto-select: What does it do?
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Dashboard was not clear
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Why cant I change the date individually in the summary?
We detected 3 essential problems
All frames were tested on marvel and maze to accurately represent all interactions and time spent on each frame.
Plan summary page
Average duration
19.5sec
Misclick rate
200%
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The first was the plan summary page, as users wanted to press the change button and customise each date to their own liking after the automatic selection.
Location
Average duration
14.9sec
Misclick rate
50%
2.
Users were also unsure of what to press when searching for the location and even attempted to exit the whole task at one point.
Frame size
Average duration
9.3sec
Misclick rate
100%
3.
As a result of using the incorrect frame size to design the paper prototype, it was difficult to understand the dates.
We wanted to recreate that experience through our UX writing
Our entire design focuses on providing an experience by giving our design personality and emotive language.
Awesome! You are one step closer! Congratulations! Thank you!)
This resulted in a 100% success rate of the auto-select path on our second paper prototype.
Being empathetic to our users using our writing
In our first paper prototype, we found that users were not confident in the auto-selection process.
Users expressed confusion over the fact that appointments could not be changed once the plan had been set up.
To make it clear to our users that everything can be changed once set up, we adopted an empathetic design that explains clearly each of the choices.
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Based on our research, we determined that it was very important to provide our users with an experience where they don't feel alone and are guided throughout the whole process. At the clinic, patients are treated with kindness and guidance, providing them with comfort. This is something we wanted to also show through our design.
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Paper prototype 2.0
We improved all the problem areas from our first prototype in our second paper prototype. As part of our second round of usability tests, we drew out new frames within the right frame size and placed them on the maze.
Our main focus was to find a solution to potential problems before moving on to a hi-fi iteration.
Pick a location
Manual selection
Auto selection
We tested 5 participants again with the same scenario and task and found the following insights:
Likes
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Auto select was easy to trust
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Easy to book
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Likes the option of a manual selection
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Good writing felt like a complete journey
Dislikes
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I want to know what booking page I am on
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Confusions
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When was my last booking? Has it been 3 months?
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WHERE was my last location
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Is the time AM? PM?
Results on our our 3 problems
Plan summary
Average duration
18.5sec
Misclick rate
17%
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The results indicated that users were still curious about how the app worked and wanted to see what would happen if you pressed the change button.
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Dates and times were no longer confusing and users were able to confirm their plans easily.
Location
Average duration
14.3sec
Misclick rate
27%
2.
Our findings from this iteration indicated that users are still confused about the map on the location page. Before viewing the buttons to enter their own location, users engaged with the map first.
Frame size
Average duration
7.6sec
Misclick rate
17%
3.
With the right frame size, we were able to add text introducing the different options we are providing and allowing more information to be displayed on one page.
This removed any chances of a misclick or confusion as proven in our results.
We understood the problem we are trying to solve
“Peter needs to feel motivated to donate so that he can donate more regularly.”
Our solution
Plan your year with us!
"Our solution is to enable users to schedule multiple appointments
with a single process helping our users be more motivated to donate more regularly.
Just like a mobile plan, this is our donation plan solution."
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Our final product indicates a positive response to all the changes we made through our paper iterations. This time, we were successful on the location page, which was the main problem we encountered throughout the testing process.
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Sign in
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Book a blood plan
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Choose a length that suits you
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Check for eligibility
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Search for nearest location
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Search for last location
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See location detail
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Select location
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Auto-selection
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Auto-selection of dates in blood donation plan
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App automatically chooses for you,
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Dates are editable on the summary page
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Choose reminder type
Manual selection
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Manual selection of dates in blood donation plan
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App automatically calculates no. of choices from your choice of duration
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Choose reminder type
Positive response
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Our final product suggests a positive response to all changes we made throughout our prototype iterations. Users were still very confident in our automatic selection process knowing that they can change the dates whenever they would like.
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Our users seemed to understand the design element of similarity in our User Interface and navigated through the time slots section easily as we expected.
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Our testing this time showed success on the location page, which was one of the major problems we encountered.
Next steps
Based on the feedback we received from our iterations, the next few steps will be to further develop features within this product to enhance the experience for our future users.
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These include:
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Indicator of where you are in the process
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Implementation of a website version
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Google calendar integration
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Show sessions remaining for each day
Main takeaways
Team work
We had a great team to work with. This is because everyone had their strongest skills in different areas of the UX process and helped one another to learn and apply different skills. Throughout this design sprint, I had to apply strong time management and task management skills in order to reach our goals. Every day we had standups and talked to each other, which was my favorite part since I love getting to know people and creating great relationships! This was one of my favorite team projects and will help me greatly in my next project.
Research
Our team was determined to highlight this case study in our research section based on the client brief and past project experience. The reason for this was that donations were something new to us. We needed to fully understand the reason behind donors and how they operate. Due to the tight deadline of this design sprint, we had a large amount of data to analyse. My wish would be to spend more time next time on the other stages of the design process.
We intuitively took on a lot of design principles while designing our user interfaces, such as hierarchy, contrast, scale and composition, but this did not develop into a well-developed group discussion. One aspect of our research was to be empathetic with our users and give them the easiest and most comfortable experience. This has been shown throughout our design but was not addressed in our design touchpoints. I am curious to learn more about this.
If i had more time
Due to time constraints, we were only able to complete 3 rounds of usability testing, and the hi-fi prototype was only tested once. This was something that I thought could be improved and would like to spend extra time on in order to make it better for the user. Ideally, I would have developed an easy-to-use manual selection path that users could feel confident about