JIVAN: The web blood bank — UX research and UI design case study

“Jivan” is a Sanskrit word which is an interpretation of the English word “Life”. What makes Jivan special? Jivan is a smartphone application that acts as a virtual Blood Bank. Every day thousands of patients have to face the crisis of blood. Patients who are suffering from Acute Leukaemia, Anaemia, Thalassemia, or any other severe diseases continuously need external blood inputs. To get their required amount of blood from the blood bank patients or their family members need to stand in a long queue. The blood bank formalities need a huge chunk of time to process each application. “Jivan” the virtual blood bank application will help to remove congestion from the application and documents verification system of the blood banks. One can instantly verify their documents and book their required blood just from their smartphone. Patients no longer need to wait for hours to get their required amount and type of blood. The Virtual blood bank is not just a single feature of Jivan. Jivan is equipped with several other features like Local blood donors listing, a specific map to easily navigate nearest blood banks, and many more.

My Role: UX researcher and UI designer

Mainly contributed to field studies, User research, Ideation, Prototyping, Usability studies, and User testing.

Time: 7/9/2020–20/9/2020

Design process:

Concept background:

It was the time of mid-December of 2019, one of my relatives who was suffering from acute leukemia had to be immediately hospitalized. He was lacking the required amount of blood in his body so; we went to different blood banks with the necessary documents to get the required blood for him. During the process, I figured out that the Indian blood banks are not well managed and very decentralized. I observed that not only me but also all other patients and their family members were facing the same issues to get their required blood from the blood banks. We all had to wait in long queues for the verification of our documents. Even after waiting for a couple of hours, we were uncertain about getting the required blood type and amount. This terrible situation hit my Gray matter badly that’s why I have grabbed the opportunity to design an application based blood booking system. I had talks with many patients and their family members to find out their problems and points of discomfort and came up with Jivan which not only helps the user to book their required blood but also to locate blood banks and connect with local blood donors. Jivan is a result of close interaction with the patients, multiple design iterations, and intense usability testing with the subjects.

Target community:

The target community has a variety of people but there was one thing which everyone had in common — they were directly or indirectly related to a patient. Some of them were from the native state but a major portion of people were from different states like Maharashtra, Assam, etc. Most of them are native speakers.

Conducting user research through the research learning spiral

Personas:

Storyboard:

Understand the subjects

Understanding the user’s needs is the most crucial part of a design problem. Before understanding the needs, we have to understand the users. I have performed three different field studies in three different hospitals. I talked with more than 40 patients and their family members. To understand the subjects and find out their pain points I grouped the gathered insights into clusters. I also introduced a subject journey map to get the proper insights about the problems one has to face to get their required blood from the blood banks. My research subjects included different types of people from different states and places. Different peoples had faced different problems.

Empathy map:

Subject journey map:

Ideation:

To start the ideation phase, I grouped my research insights and filtered out the possible opportunities to improve the pain point of the subjects. I realized that only virtual blood bank facilities will not resolve the subject’s needs. So, I also include a feature where the users can search about their nearest blood donors and request them to donate blood.

Concept refinement:

Using the insight-driven user scenarios, I conducted a series of sketching sessions to brainstorm and come up with possible features and methods that could potentially improve the current ways of the blood booking system. Ideas are revolving around the blood booking process. After a couple of more field studies, I added the “Request blood from blood donors” feature in the application that can help the user to have a backup plan. I noticed that some patients who were from different states find it very difficult to locate the blood banks. They had to ask the local mobs for the address of the blood banks. Even existing maps like google map, bing map are not helpful for them because they are very cluttered with excessive information. So, I introduced a specific map system that can help the users to flawlessly locate the local blood banks.

Information architecture:

How is Jivan human-centered?

Insights from our user research revealed people’s desire to have an online system that can help them to book their required blood instantly. Time is a very crucial quantity for patients. Every minute is very important for a patient. So, nobody wanted to waste uncountable hours in the queues of blood banks.

Jivan caters to these human needs and desires by allowing people to use an online system to book their required blood and verify their documents within a couple of minutes. One can also find out the nearest blood donors using this application. This application can potentially change the way of how people experiencing the existing system blood bank system.

Initial wireframe:

Wireframe testing:

High fidelity wireframe:

Style guide:

Key Features:

Final prototype:

Final interactive prototype:

Showcasing at the Mini Maker’s festival (Kolkata)

Usability Testing:

I had tested the developed prototype with more than 45 subjects. I had chosen subjects from all different clusters based on their native language, education, state, and age. Below is the report of the usability testing.

Future Scope

Most of the hospitals contain patients from different literary backgrounds. Some patients or their family members were not capable enough to navigate through the application because they had hardly use any smartphones before. This is one of the vital parts where we should have to concentrate more focus to design such user interfaces that can help the illiterate or semi-illiterate users.
I also found that the document verification system is tedious to use for some subjects because a blood bank needs a lot of documents for verification. So we can work on that to develop a smooth and hassle-free document verification system for the users.