Help us connect with blood donors
Case study: Red Cross Lifeblood
Note: If you are here for the full case study, or the Retaining Donors Design and Research Document, please contact me. This will be available to access soon here.
Client: Red Cross Lifeblood
Industry: Non-government organisation; Blood Service
Duration: 2 weeks sprint
Team: Holly, Kyle, Kevin, Yasha
Deliverables: Retaining Donors Design and Research Document and High Fidelity Prototype
Tools: Figma, Miro, Zoom
Our Challenge
1 in 5 blood donation appointments are cancelled each week.
43% of first time donors never come back.
The Red Cross Lifeblood service cannot continue to meet the need for blood donations in Australia.
Our Solution
We designed a holistic, evidence-based solution to retain donors and keep them coming back.
Understanding Who Our Donors Are
We interviewed donors (previous and regular) to identify their motivations and behaviours towards donating blood. Key insights:
We visited our nearest blood donation centres to gain an understanding of the donating experience first-hand:
We found Red Cross staff had consistent insights:
“People like to come here to pay it forward”
“When people book in advance they forget”
In a study by Anne Wevers et al., the main barriers to donate blood included:
- Unspecified time constraints (35%)
They linked unspecified time constraints to the idea of “Social Inertia”:
“Social inertia is when a person has a positive attitude towards a request, but doesn’t take the corresponding action because of a lack of urgency or motivation.”
We created a primary persona based on our research to focus on building a solution that would provide Red Cross with the greatest impact.
Meet, ‘The Hustler’:
Understanding Our Blood Donors Journey
I contacted the Red Cross Lifeblood customer support team and we mapped their current user engagement process as a cycle:
What we found though, is that the donor journey actually looks like this:
Designing the Right Solution
It was evident that the 3 month email reminder does not meet the users need for connection and does not create an urgency to book.
“How might we better remind donors that donating blood is a part of their life?”
How?
- Push Notifications with targeted, personalised copy
- Sending push notifications at critical times in the customers journey
- Improve booking workflow starting with push notification
- Improve questionnaire workflow starting with push notification
Why?
- Engage our customer throughout their journey
- Provide purposeful and meaningful call-to-action
- Create better accessibility to booking appointments
- Create better accessibility to confirm eligibility pre-appointment
To validate this assumption, we researched the effectiveness of personalised push notifications against the current tools used by Red Cross.
We design our solution within the customer journey to look like this:
Due to time constraints, we focused on delivering the two push notifications that would deliver the greatest impact for Red Cross, i.e. create the greatest sense of urgency and connection with Donors so they book (and attend) their next appointment.
We would know our solution to be successful through:
- Increased app downloads and average rating
- Rate of users with app downloaded and push notifications enabled
- Rate of attended appointments
Testing with Donors
We conducted usability testing with 5 users, and made iterations to our design. Our final prototypes:
Click here to access Figma clickable prototype.
What we found however, was that our solution would only be effective at targeting users with the app. Plus, we didn’t feel we were completely solving our Donors need for urgency.
To fully understand how we could address these requirements, we identified opportunities beyond the digital experience in the customer journey:
To optimise the impact of our solution, a broader user experience strategy was designed to seek alignment across the digital platforms, marketing and operation teams:
Within this strategy, we acknowledge that not all users may want to download the app. In this case, our recommendation is to:
- Provide donors with the value of downloading the app
- Marketing and on-site experience targeting personal connection with customers to increase their motivation (urgency) to make a booking
Next Steps
- Develop an enhanced customer engagement strategy with the Red Cross Lifeblood business and operational departments that targets increasing app downloads and use of push notifications
- Work with marketing and operational teams to identify MVP for go-live
- Conduct further usability testing (considering key areas of the push notification — timing & personalised messaging)
- Long-term, develop implementation strategy
Key Learnings and Takeaways
- Understanding UX is a part of the broader customer end to end experience. It is important to understand this context to build effective UX solutions that offer the greatest impact for the business and our user.
- IRL, we would work with the broader teams throughout the design process to develop a consistent and effective approach.
Some Fun Things
100% of donors we interviewed enjoy their post-donation snack!
Top 3 snack choices:
- Choccy milk — hands down winner
- Biscuits — errybody loves a good biccie
- Tie between the meat pies and sausage rolls — how darn good of a post-donation snack is that?!
Personal Takeaway
It was a great feeling to be completing a project for a service that means so much to people and has such an important social impact. It gave me that inner smile and has motivated me to seek how I can effect positive change through my work, and in my life.
We trust our solution would get you to donate regularly. But in light of that, go to the Red Cross Lifeblood website or download the app, and book yourself in today. Note — if you are not in Australia, I encourage you to connect with your blood donation service!
If the choccy milk doesn’t get you excited, knowing that you are saving 3 lives will!
