September 2020 – April 2021
UX/UI Design, User Research, Prototyping & Video Pitch
Adobe XD, Photoshop, Illustrator, Rotato & Final Cut Pro X
Winner of Google’s COVID-19 Hackathon Relief Fund
Blood donations are more necessary than ever during the current COVID-19 pandemic, and blood centres throughout the Americas are taking measures to ensure that donations continue in a safe manner for blood donors and recipients.
Unified Blood Donation is an attempt to tackle this issue where we connect blood banks and hospitals to nearby potential donors with high-demand blood types in real-time.
Looking at how worldwide community health services struggled to keep blood storage, even during times of relative calm, we knew there was a need for more donors but the average person had little to no at-hand resources to connect them with blood donation centres in real-time.
“Every 2 seconds, someone in the United States needs blood, but supplies are low due to COVID-19. In developing countries that number is even worse.”
— Medical News Today
“Over 100 million units of blood are donated annually, yet 42% of that is collected in high-income countries, which include less than 16% of the world's population.”
— Science Alert
“In Africa, 38 countries collect fewer than WHO's goal of 10 donations per 1,000 people, and often test kits for blood-borne diseases are lacking.”
— Science Alert
After some research, digging through the internet, interviewing people, speaking with Professors, experts and our personal experiences, we put together these problem statements (in the order of urgency).
Takes almost an hour or two (depending on the Hospital/Blood Bank) just to wrap up the paperwork and sign you off as a ‘donor’
Finding a readily available donor is painstakingly slow, especially in emergency scenarios
The Lack of interconnectedness and communication between any two blood banks, thus disrupting efficiency
Lack of a reliable community of donors, which if present could make huge implications on the entire process
Lack of motivated donors - No proper incentive and means of motivation
loved the idea and would love to give it a try
have went through a situation (at least once in their lives) of struggling to find blood donors at the right time
had donated blood at least once before
have (among the 3 who struggled to find donors) experienced corruption by blood banks as they charged them extra to take advantage of their situation
told they used social media (primarily Facebook & WhatsApp) to find donors
would donate more often if they know where their blood was used (i.e., more transparency)
And finally, we needed to incentivize their donations so they keep donating regularly.
Secondly, we needed to motivate them and what better way to do that than to gamify their experience.
The best way to do that was through an app that could connect blood donors and banks in real-time, especially since nowadays everyone owns a smartphone.
We devised a Business Model to provide us with a clearer picture of our solution and a revenue model for when we convert this to a startup in the near future.
Using a QR code as a donor info hub (which we like to call QuickID), which stores all of the user’s personal & medical data, we aim to connect new and current blood donors across a given area, saving time by streamlining the donor registration process.
The UBD app is carefully designed to give donors & hospitals the best user experience when using the app. The clean and minimal approach removes all the clutters and allows them to see what’s actually important.
The branding is consistent, keeping the design friendly & inviting throughout. Visual feedback is also very influential in crafting a great experience.
Every user has his/her own unique QuickID, which when scanned can retrieve the user’s data onto the donation centre’s database in a matter of seconds, thus reducing a huge chunk of paperwork and saving hours of processing time.
Users get an option to join active communities too which adds another factor to the user’s motivation.
Once joined, they’ll be able to see how much of an impact their community has made and compare themselves on a global as well as a local leaderboard.
The introduction of communities is also another form of networking medium for the users, hopefully making lifelong friendships.
Home contains all the donation requests prioritized by urgency from nearby locations to the entire country, with an option to filter both.
Users should be able to see at a glance, how urgent the donation is, how near/far is it from their current location, what blood type is needed, etc.
So, I designed each donation request as a card that shows all the necessary information.
Every urgent request is marked with an ‘Urgent’ tag and is pinned at the top (of Home) by default for all users for it to get noticed fast. A priority notification is also sent out to aid the urgency.
It contains all the information about the donor, both personal as well as medical, which is updated regularly through routine reminders by the app*.
On-time blood donation that potentially saves his/her life
Access to a dedicated and committed blood donation community
A huge reduction in paper work
A wider reach as the process is digitized (through our app)
Potentially HELPS SAVE LIVES!
Can connect to blood banks and donors in real time
Gets reward points that can be redeemed for vouchers, etc
Networking by joining similar groups
Regular blood donation has been scientifically proven to purify the blood
Inner self-satisfaction of saving lives
Can interconnect between banks such that if one bank is in short of a certain blood type, other banks can help it through our network
Need not depend on donation campaigns and other activities
Can promote blood donation through our app instead of flyers, etc
Our progress so far has been nothing short of amazing and we wanna keep growing. We have some amazing stuff planned for our future and hopefully release a fully functional app by spring 2022.
WHO estimates that blood donation by 1% of the population can meet a nation’s most basic requirements for blood.
So if our app could help that number grow even by a small bit, it could potentially save millions of lives and needless to say it’ll be a massive leap to the healthcare industry.
I learned a ton from both the project as well as the peeps involved in it.
One big lesson was working under pressure and actually delivering what was promised :D. I still remember, back in April, we finished the app (beta version) just a few hours before our presentation. But the important bit is, we delivered!
Since this was completely a virtual event, we had a tough time meeting due to the different time zones 😅.
All in all this project is dear to my heart as this not only helps people get blood on time (and thereby saving lives) but also proves that there are good samaritans out there wanting to help others out.
I loved working on this project and I hope this reaches as many people as possible to make the best impact!
