OLIVIA THORNTON

A rapid discovery

2 days, 6 people and a whole lot of issues

Our problem statement was “How might we provide an integrated blood donation service in the NHS App”. We had two half days to understand the problem, the current service, and then come up with a solution.

We mapped out the current ‘book an appointment’ journey in Miro. Taking screenshots and notes from NHS Blood and Transplant’s current blood donor app, NHSGiveBlood. Then we realised we were missing a key part of the user journey, giving blood.

So, in the name of user research, I followed through on my appointment booking and gave blood that afternoon. Noting down every task and pain point along the way (no pun intended).

We didn’t want to just slot the existing booking journey into the app, we wanted to go above and beyond. Figuring out the issues, and optimising the experience, from logging in, through to donor aftercare.

If you’ve given blood before, you’ll know there are lots of reasons you can’t give blood on the day. Most reasons are listed on the donor health check form you fill out (a whopping 39-questions long) before you donate, but a donor carer will make the final decision on the day based on your answers. So, you could end up waiting 40 minutes or more to be told you can’t give blood.

To crack this problem, we planned to integrate a pre-booking questionnaire into the booking journey, and also digitising the donor health check form for users to fill out before they go. The aim here was to save users from booking appointments when they’re not eligible to give blood, and also to make it a paperless journey.

We also looked at how we might raise awareness of the new app service and take advantage of notifications and messaging in the NHS App. 

Working with NHS Blood and Transplant, we could target specific blood groups via push notifications, and encourage people to donate when stocks are low. We could also send appointment reminders too, letting users change or cancel their appointment if necessary.

If we manage to integrate this service as planned, we could save NHS Blood and Transplant hundreds of hours (not to mention trees) printing and sending out paperwork. More importantly, we could save many users turning up to donation centres when they can’t give blood, freeing up appointments for those who can make a donation.  

Less paperwork + more donors making donations = a great blood donor experience