Improving our population health through a MOVEMENT of blood donors.

RED CROSS LIFEBLOOD

CLIENT PROJECT 02 // NOV - DEC 2023

ROLE

UI Researcher
Animator
Audio Designer

OVERVIEW

The Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, part of the Red Cross Society, focus on collection, testing and distribution of life-saving blood. Having launched a new strategy called “Unlocked 2027”, they aim to pitch to their executive board of directors a new scheme called “Preventative Health”, promoting a movement of donors to raise awareness of the health benefits of blood donations on individuals and society.

PROBLEM

Red Cross Lifeblood’s new 5-year strategy aims to be “Essential to Health” by improving Australia’s health, increasing blood supplies and raising brand awareness through “A Movement of Donors”. This means expanding beyond blood collection to potentially offer more health services. This significant change will affect many aspects of the organisation, such as cost, branding, processes, customer experience, and regulations.

OBJECTIVE

The organisation needed creative and strategic assistance to clarify the actions required to achieve those goals. The Executive Team needed to be provided with a persuasive vision of the possible services to justify further investment of time and effort into this proposition.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES

  • Simplify through visual communication - diagrams, storyboard, animation/video the potential future and change possible. To embed the aspiration and vision
  • Visual Assets or Aids used in internal collateral such as project documents, vision packs etc. that will sustain the visibility of the long term goal over many years
  • Help the audience develop greater empathy for the beneficiaries of these services
Wave Frisbee Graphic

DISCOVERY

APPROACH
The largest challenge going into this project for our team was storyboarding, so we had to be incredibly resourceful with where we focused our time.

The following high level approach was followed in order efficiently tackle Australian Red Cross Lifeblood’s problem.
DEFINING KEY STRATEGY PILLARS
From research of Lifeblood’s brief, “Lifeblood Unlocked - Strategy 2027” brief and “Preventative Health Draft Report”, as well as an initial interview with Alex Young (Innovation Manager of Australian Red Cross Lifeblood), 4x key strategy pillars were highlighted as being the central purpose of the new Unlocked strategy.

3x strategy pillars would be the main goal of the upcoming Preventative Health pitch:ocused our time.

DEFINE

CORE CUSTOMER NEEDS
Being a risk adverse organisation with strong clinical views and a love for huge documentation to communicate, it was clear that Red Cross Lifeblood lacked the creativity needed to convincingly inform their CEO and Executive board the envisioned potential of their new Preventative Health strategy.

The first step was validating a need for Lifeblood’s new proposal in order to uncover not only their needs/wants, but the needs of possible health partners and Australian customers taking part in their initiative.

We identified the following needs for Lifeblood, Australian customers and health partners:
Lifeblood wants to:
  • Ensure the Preventative Health strategy directly addresses the needs of Australians, so that Lifeblood can become essential to their health journey and increase its impact
  • Incentivise potential donors to donate so that a larger percentage of the Australian population become donors
  • Understand what the future of Lifeblood looks like, the services that will be available to donors and non-donors, and how they’ll experience them
Australians want to:
  • Be informed and empowered with health insights to motivate them to lead a healthier life and possible become blood donors
  • Have accessible and easy-to-understand information about how to improve their health so they can live a healthier life in their old age
  • Easily improve their mental and physical health to avoid future health issues
Health Partners want to:
  • Collaborate with Lifeblood in ways that suppoort their shared goals of preventative health and optimal blood use, so that they can together improve health outcomes
  • Disseminate clear and actionable health information so that individuals can make informed decisions about their health behaviours
  • Improve health outcomes for all Australians within the current limitations of Australia's healthcare system
HOW MIGHT WE
Team workshops were vital to producing as many How Might We statements related to the research insights made (get into specifics). Grouping based on common themes and synthesising would be the next step, followed by a sticker by each team member to show which ones resonated the most to the “Movement of Donors” and “Essential to Health” strategy pillars.
After this process, four reframed How Might We statements were agreed upon to be iterated into storyboards:
HOW MIGHT WE leverage Lifeblood's preventative health initiatives to enhance brand visibility and accessibility, thereby increasing the number of blood donations and enabling healthier lives for Australians
HOW MIGHT WE make donating blood more accessible and appealing to a wider range of people from different background and communities?
HOW MIGHT WE implement Preventative Health initiatives that increase brand awareness and visibility of Lifeblood in the health space?
HOW MIGHT WE further engage youth outreach through Lifeblood’s Preventative Health strategies and initiatives?
HOW MIGHT WE create better incentive strategies to entice customers to not only donate, but to promote continuous donation culture?

OPTIMISING OUR PLAN OF ATTACK

As the project involved creating an animated pitch to be presented to Lifeblood's board of directors, the team agreed that the most important task was to perfect the storyboard in the develop stage of the sprint; To create a compelling and relatable story that fits Lifeblood's "Preventative Health" narrative.

Therefore, for the next 2 weeks leading up to delivering our solution to Lifeblood, our focus aligned solely to:
  • Ideation Planning: Utilising Affinity Mapping and Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to flesh out the characters and scenarios.
  • Narrative Writing/Scripting: Creating storyboard’s based off previously generated HMW statements.
  • Storyboard Sketches: Generating storyboard imagery for animation via AI-generation.
  • Low Fidelity Storyboard: Synthesising storyboard and creating drafts to present to Lifeblood.

DEVELOP

AFFINITY MAPPING + MVP
The team switched to divergent ideating, first open card sorting all possible solutions for 7x main points from the HMW statements and visually grouping them on an Affinity Map. The following key features were identified to implement in our storyboard sketches:
  • Convenience and Access: How can the story display the convenience of donating blood.
  • Incentivise: How can the story create better incentive strategies to entice customers to donate, promote continuous donation culture and encourage commitment to better health strategies.
  • Diverse Audience: How can the story cater for and reach a more diverse/untouched demographic to donate blood.
  • Advocacy: How can the story promote advocation of the benefits and vast information gained from blood donation.
  • Retainment: How can the story effectively show the retainment of donors for life
  • Commonalities: How can the story link the commonalities between blood donation and improved general health.
  • Presentation to Executives: How can the story effectively communicate the value and significance of a preventative health strategy, and it’s enhancements to both donor supply and improved health among Australians, to Lifeblood Executives.
I conducted workshops to plot the open sort solutions onto a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) graph. This provided visual clarity on which suggested solutions had great impact and was easy to implement into future iterations of the draft storyboards. This proved to be crucial in helping fasten the storyboarding process.
STORYBOARDING
The story needed to address the two strategy pillars of “Essential to Health” and “A Movement of Donors”, show the impact of the strategy to stakeholders and its feasibility in a realistic and relatable story.

Team workshops sessions were organised every day, utilising the How Might We statements and groupings made to target different scenarios. This was treated like an open sort, where many storyboards were curated, and then slowly synthesised/shortlisted based of similarities and impact.
FINAL STORYBOARD
After scheduled meetings with the Lifeblood clients and updated revisions, the team finally created a compelling storyboard that not only targeted the two pillars of "A movement of donors" and "Essential to health". **mention farmers market

We were able to also tie in a 3rd pillar, "Workforce of champions", further strengthening the Preventative Health strategy and showcasing its potential.

DELIVER

With only a few more days before the final presentation of our proposed animation pitch to Lifeblood, I had the pleasure of working with fellow team members Kaustubh Deshpande, Evie Smalley and Kate Kachel as part of the animation team to bring approved storyboards to life.



From writing the script for our characters, working together on animating each segment of the storyboard, creating the background imagery through to making AI-generated voiceovers thriving with emotion, it would not have been possible without meeting up everyday and working together tirelessly to perfect the vision the entire team worked so hard to bring to life.
SYNOPSIS - FARMER'S MARKET
Ben - a hardworking individual - is encourage by his caring wife, Mia, to visit a nurse at the Red Cross Lifecare stall at the local farmers market. The nurse recognises signs of stress and suggests Ben consult a general practitioner for a mental health care plan.



On his way home, Ben encounters a friend and rediscovers his love for football, reigniting a forgotten passion. Empowered by the support of his friend, Ben decides to prioritise his mental health. Post-treatment Ben revisits the doctor after six months. He expresses gratitude for the positive impact of psychologist sessions on his well-being, leading to reduced stress at work and an increase in active lifestyle.
WHAT THE STORYBOARD ACHIEVED
  • Tied together three of the four strategy pillars in a single scenario (Movement of Donors, Essential to Health, a Workforce of Champions)
  • Addressed three key opportunities for Lifeblood: Donor acquisition, donor retention and public health improvement
  • Addressed the risk averse nature of the executive team by showing a story that sparks imagination and envisions how the strategy is feasible
  • Showed the breadth of capabilities Lifeblood could offer and the wide range of stakeholders it could positively impact, whilst being low risk

LIFEBLOOD'S ANIMATED PITCH

TAKEAWAYS

It was an eye-opening experience working on this project, teaching me that UX/UI doesn't necessarily mean you are confined to web/app development. The theories and techniques used to research and ideate can span across all problem solving situations, and has definitely educated me a lot about knowing when and where to focus your energy and efforts.

Some key takeaways from this project were:
  • Trust the process: Going into this project, I was unsure whether we would be able to create a pitch as it wasn't a problem I was accustomed to tackling. However, the more I delved into the problem and used the research and ideating techniques, the more confident I felt I would be able to come up with a human-centric solution.
  • Focus on the problem: The main issue is tackling the problem and making sure you can solve it from the perspective of the user.

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