As the Manager of Experience at Australian Red Cross Lifeblood (2020–2023), I led the strategy and roadmap for our digital touchpoints. These are some pieces I worked on in this time.
Through donor sentiment we understood that people wanted a clearer picture of how much blood Lifeblood actually holds and when donations are most urgently needed. That kind of transparency, they felt, would help them decide when to give and which blood types were most in demand.
Looking around the world, we saw that many blood services already share stock levels by blood type. They often use visual metaphors from blood bags to test tubes to drops of blood to show how much is left.
But what would resonate most with Australian donors? And how could we present this information in a way that motivates rather than discourages them?
Our research focused on a few key questions:
- Would seeing stock levels inspire donors to book or risk putting them off?
- If someone doesn’t know their blood type, would they still find value in the information?
- Should plasma be included alongside blood stocks?
- Do simple labels like high/medium/low help, or is a more precise visual better?
- Which graphic style feels clearest and most engaging?
To explore this, we ran a survey with two donor segments: those who didn’t know their blood type, and those with blood type O+. This gave us the flexibility to split or aggregate the responses and uncover any patterns between different types of donors.
What we found
Have clearer next steps
Some non donors saw blood stock information as a call to donate but weren’t too sure about next steps. CTAs to find a donor centre, check eligibility or availability were key in getting users to donate.
Stronger labels could drive people to donate
Using strong and clear language such as “Critical” or “urgent” resonated much more with donors and non donors. In the test “Critical” was twice as effective to inspire people to donate.
Defaulting to state might not be the most effective to inspire donors
Test participants saw stocks as Australian not state/centre level so defaulting to the state level when users see the chart might not motivate them to donate.
Download Blood Stock Levels pack (pdf 2.3mb)
