Blood Bank: Colourful Minds’ app

First of all, let us introduce ourselves. We are Eleni Georgiou Amalia St Maria Staikopoulou Marilou Karakosta Nefeli Staikoura Andromache Efstathiou and me, Lambrini Tsiligianni, aka Colourful Minds.

Studying Communication, Media and Culture in Panteion University we had the opportunity because of our Ad & Pr Lab- a part of which is the Creativity Lab- to create this app. We want to thank Betty Tsakarestou and Dr. Stavros Kaperonis for giving us the opportunity to get into design thinking but also learn from the best. Through the semester we had the honor to meet Panagiotis Zaharias, Founder and UX Researcher and Antonis Birmpas ,UX Researcher and Art Director [https://www.theuxprodigy.com/] and Magy Kontou Co-Founder, Lead UI/UX Designer at SimpleApps [https://simpleapps.gr/en/].

As a team we put a lot of effort to create our app for Blood Bank because we believe that people nowadays spend a lot more time on their smartphones than their computers. So we wanted to create something that would be much more helpful for any blood donor and still easy to access it.

The process of designing it led us do some research of what other similar apps and websites already exist and how they work. A few similar options popped up but nothing was so specific as we created it. The most important difference between Blood Bank app and the rest of the apps around the web is the fact that through Blood Bank the user has the opportunity to be a donor of blood but when in need can ask the community for help.

And how this works?
So when the user opens the app for the first time after seeing Blood Bank’s logo for a few seconds he/she is being directed to a page asking him/her if they wish to log in or sign in. If you have already an account you simply use your email and password but if it’s your first time using the app you have to sign in through Facebook or via email. In both cases the user has to fill in some basic fields in order to create his/hers personal profile, such as blood type, weight, age etc.

After going through these steps home page is on sight. There the user can see profiles of people that need blood at that time. On top of the page the user can find three buttons. The first one is user’s profile with the basic characteristics of him/her. The second one is favorite’s profiles, where the user “save” profiles of friends, family or other donors and in that way can follow their process on their blood needs. Then the third button is about notifications that occasionally will be sent to the user and will have to do with different matters such as when they can be a donor again etc.

Then on your left side there is the menu of the app. The first option in there is “Plea” where the user asks for blood from the rest of the community. “Previous Donations” is right after and has a list of the user’s blood donations as to whom, when and in which hospital they made it. Then “medical history” follows and it shows users history as far as medicine or illnesses of the past, so the user can keep track on their health and furthermore if they can donate blood for someone else. “Emergency Hospitals” is the next option. While creating this app we thought that having an option of easy access to emergency hospitals would be so helpful for anyone in need. So by clicking there the user can search instantly for emergency hospitals in the chosen area and find directions and telephone numbers to contact. Then last option of the menu is log out. It works as simple as is in any other app and helps the users change profiles in the same device.

Lastly, Blood Bank has its own settings. The users by clicking the settings button has the opportunity to change their password, switch the language from English to Greek and the other way around, ask our team questions for a better app experience and of course read our privacy policy for the app.

Blood Bank’s app is as simple as it could be. We didn’t want our users to try too hard to understand how everything works so getting inspired by other commonly used apps we created something that anyone can use even if they are not so familiar with technology. This is something that UX Prodigy and the Heuristics we have been introduced to made us think about. Studying the Heuristics we understood how important it is for the user to have an as simple as possible user experience journey. Functionality is the key, as our coaches explained to us, in order to an app to be successful and easy to use. Our colors of course had to be white and red in order to match our whole theme and our website. This is also something that we learned through Heuristic Evaluation and the importance of it.

Great help for us to create this app was Magy Kontou that showed us around the proto.io platform and shared ideas, tips and problems that may occur. She helped us learn a few basic functions of the platform and use them in our favor, gave us tips for a better looking app and other sites and sources that we could get material to enrich our idea.

So the two most important things that we learned through this process is how much of important it is to create something functional not only for you, that already have the idea on mind, but also for any other user willing to download and use your app. Especially the fact that we wanted to create an app for not only young people that are already familiar with that kind of stuff but also for older people that are blood donors and want to keep up. The next thing that we learned and we think is very important is how to use the proto.io platform. It is a great way to depict your ideas on screen in a pretty much professional way and has so many features that help the process of pleasant design of an app and for sure we will use it again in the future when we need something similar.

Of course we faced some problems during this whole journey. The most difficult one was the obstacles we had to overcome in order to make our app practical and pleasant to use. As we’ve said UX really made us understand how important this step is so that’s why we put a lot of effort on it. And of course the proto.io platform wasn’t that easy to use at first but practice made us better. The one thing that we didn’t manage to accomplish was at the “Help” option the fact that we couldn’t give our users the opportunity to ask their questions in the app and get their answers right there but we had to redirect them in another site to get the information they wanted.

Lastly we wanted to share some other small tips that we find important, for anyone else that would like to create something similar. Be organized is the key. Organizing your work from the very first idea till the last option on your menu is so important. Only then you can be fully aware of what you are creating and see as many problems as possible. Also in order to help you with the observation of the problems ask people that don’t work with you on how they find your idea or a specific feature in your app. We did the same thing and it was so helpful for the whole team to find strengths and weaknesses in our idea. Last but not least when it comes to designing the app on proto.io, have a few days to discover how this platform works and then draw your ideas on paper. After having everything planned out your work would be much easier.

You can read our original idea here; https://medium.com/@mariloukarakosta/we-are-colourful-minds-and-during-our-sessions-of-our-ad-n-pr-lab-digital-creativity-apps-c2b2f3e7d7a5

Find out about our site as well here; https://medium.com/@eleni4698/bloodbank-gr-2a33a7ff87cc

And don’t forget, donation saves lives!