Give a little / Give a lot
Nudging blood donors to roll up their sleeves a little more often
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Client: Red Cross Lifeblood
My role: Research, Design, Prototype
Duration: 2 weeks
Team: Peter, Jason, Addi and myself
Lifeblood (Australian Red Cross) relies on the generosity of donors rolling up their sleeves and giving their time, and a little part of themselves(470ml) to save countless lives. Lifeblood often face donor shortages, especially now after the COVID pandemic. Our client thinks COVID is the culprit, so what can we do about it?
We found that by increasing convenience by reducing travel and planning, people who donated blood previously were more likely to donate again.
PROJECT GOALS
Understand who our users are, their motivations and behaviours
Increase the number of blood donations
Design a digital experience to meet Lifeblood’s business and customers’ needs
Giving it a go
WHAT WE LEARNED
To get an accurate picture of the problem space, we conducted interviews over the phone, in-person interviews with staff at the donation centre, and contextual inquiries of people who just completed their blood donations. I also tried to give blood myself to gain a better understanding of the customer journey.
Our interviews with clinic staff revealed COVID actually increased blood donations because people used blood donations as a way to leave their homes and meet up with friends. However, now that people can freely travel again, priorities have shifted and giving blood is no longer front of mind for many donors.
WHAT GIVES?
Factors influencing people to donate
BARRIERS TO GIVING
Factors stopping donation
MOST DONORS ARE REPEAT DONORS
Secondary research showed:
Repeat donors make up 95% of blood donations
The highest proportion of donors are between 20-39 years old
Transfusion-transmissible infections in Australia: 2021 Surveillance Report. Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney, and Australian Red Cross Lifeblood; 2021
WHERE OUR NEEDLE POINTED
Based on our research, it would be most effective to target a younger age group who are altruistic and socially conscious. They don’t donate as much as they would like to but have before and are ready to donate more.
Hopefully all they need is a little nudge to donate more often.
MEET AMBER
HER JOURNEY LOOKED LIKE THIS
THE PROBLEM
Planning her blood donation is no short of a pain in the blunt needle in the arm. Because of this, Amber doesn’t even book.
NUDGING AMBER TO DONATE
HMW increase donation opportunities?
HMW make the blood donation fit into her schedule?
HMW get donations to go to her?
LEVERAGING THE EXISTING DIGITAL EXPERIENCE
The problem we identified is about convenience and locations. From a business perspective, additional donation clinics and mobile clinics would be less feasible due to cost and time for implementation.
Lifeblood promotes the use of their easy-to-use app which allows the user to store their donor information and manage appointments. This provided the perfect springboard to introduce a more personalised experience through a digital solution that is agile, cost effective and did not involve high CapEx or OpEx.
Donation clinics are generally located within populated and convenient locations. Why not remind Amber to donate when she's near a clinic to eliminate the pain points of travelling, planning or booking ahead?
SOLUTION
Just in time notifications to prompt behaviour change. This is how it might work:
OUTCOMES
At each stage of user testing, we tried to gain an understanding of how effective the concept was. We sought to compare the likelihood of blood donation before and after testing through a series of questions on a Likert scale. Turns out it worked.
3 out of 6 participants were more likely to make a booking
WHAT INFLUENCED OUR DESIGN
NUDGES
Creating desired behaviour change through the power of nudge.
WORDS MATTER
During user testing, I discovered how important UX writing is when it comes to communicating with your audience. Sometimes the tone of voice you hear in your head isn’t always the same as how it sounds for users. We wanted to capture the positive feelings of blood donations so we aimed to keep the copy casual and enthusiastic.
MAKING IT SOCIAL
Given our research showed people have used blood donations as an opportunity to catch up with friends during COVID, why not take advantage and encourage this behaviour to further increase donations?
LOOKING AHEAD
This is just the beginning:
COMPARING WITH LIFEBLOOD'S STRATEGY
Post project completion I had a coffee chat to discuss the project with Lifeblood Donor Researcher Prof. Barbara Masser. She provided the following insight based on their research:
Lifeblood is targeting people who have settled down and are further along the donor life cycle. Younger donors often have their donation habits broken by life changes and disruptors like overseas travel. However once people are older, they are often more stable and it is easier to develop a frequent donor relationship.
The difference between our demographics and Lifeblood's reminded me how close user and business needs are in UX. Knowing who you are targeting and why depends on the context and business goals. Lifeblood's target audience is based on donors who have low lifetime costs, while ours are a younger demographic who would best respond to a digital experience.
MR FOGG, I ALSO PROMISE NOT TO USE IT FOR EVIL
Having a interest behavioural economics and psychology, I reflected on B.J. Fogg's model of influencing behaviour which provided a framework to see which category each factor for blood donation fell. It was interesting to see which levers our solution pulled in order to affect behaviour change.
LOOKING BACK
Blood donation is a big problem but also not a new one. Leveraging secondary research and interviewing SMEs can help understand the problem quickly.
It would be valuable to have conducted some AB testing for the new feature onboarding and location access request as it is a critical component of our solution. This would have allowed us to maximise the impact of the new feature.
The number of interviews we conducted was not sufficient to form a persona. It would have been more useful to identify broader patterns of target user behaviour using donor archetypes, especially after I found this has already been explored in science journals.
LIFEBLOOD AS A SERVICE
Trying to understand Lifeblood through a service design blueprint:
