Cutting blood shortage & waste through field research

What kind of design this was

Service & systems design, driven by ethnographic research

This was primarily service design and systems design — mapping a life-or-death, multi-stakeholder system end to end and designing an intervention at its highest-leverage point — grounded in ethnographic design research (shadowing, interviews, surveys) and delivered through UX / interaction design of a multi-role web portal and prediction tool. I led the design research and design end to end as the sole designer on a two-person team (the other a business-school student).

About the project

A challenge from the Smart Nashik initiative

This was one of the challenges listed by TCS as part of the Smart Nashik initiative. Among various themes, I chose this challenge for the magnitude of the problem and its impact on society.

Purpose & scope. Each year more than 40 million units of blood are required across India — yet access to information about bloodstock availability and donation remains far from satisfactory. In a medical emergency, blood is a critical component, and a needy citizen should know where to get it, or how to access the required quantity quickly.

Reason: I wanted to design solutions in the health domain and understand this age-old challenge. Guides: Mr. Chakradhar Saswade, Dr. Aneesha Sharma.

The problem I set out to resolve

A structural supply–demand gap

Nashik is a city of around 1.4 million with only thirteen blood banks. Ideally one bank serves a million people, yet the banks aren't equipped — in infrastructure or instruments — to serve that purpose. The gap between supply and demand was structural, not random: emergencies turned into desperate searches while collected blood expired unused.

Research process

From a national problem down to one city's mechanics

I started with secondary research — reports, statistics, journals, research papers — to understand the magnitude of the problem, then mapped the whole ecosystem and deliberately narrowed the focus from national to city level, because a life-or-death systems problem can only be fixed where you can actually observe its mechanics.

Ecosystem mapping of the blood-bank system

Over the next three weeks the team worked to understand the lives of recipients in hospitals, blood-bank in-charges, and donors. We interviewed in-charges from Jankalyan, Bytco, Arpan, Nashik, Jeevan, the Super-speciality hospital, and Civil hospital, who shared their daily schedules and challenges. We then shadowed donors at a blood-donation camp for observational research, and ran online surveys sent to around 100 residents of Nashik. Nurses described their actions and thoughts while we followed them through recipients' rooms (mainly the maternity ward). Back at the whiteboard, we mapped findings via empathy mapping and affinity mapping, surfacing gaps and opportunities across five lenses: process, people, technology, policy, and communication.

Affinity mapping — Affinity & empathy mapping

Mapping findings — Synthesizing field findings

Research findings

Stakeholders, and where the system broke

I divided stakeholders into core (Recipients, Donors, Blood bank — the targets of the solution), direct, and indirect.

Scenario in the blood bank

The gap between demand and supply has grown consistently over the years. Mapping 2011 supply and demand revealed demand spiked in June and October (monsoons and the rise of dengue), while camp collection peaked in winter (Jan and Dec) and walk-in collection stayed low year-round (except May). Key insights from a six-week demand-vs-camp-collection comparison:

A sudden demand spike on 29th Feb (blood used in the maternity ward) — possibly because it was a unique date to give birth.
Blood has a 35-day shelf life: of 152 units collected, 31 units went to waste even amid high demand — likely due to poor camp planning.
If those 31 units had been utilized, it would have created significant impact in terms of money and lives.

Primary research surfaced further blood-bank truths: inability to maintain supply at seasonal peaks; difficulty reducing wastage during oversupply; human error leading to fatalities; no proper channel to contact other banks/hospitals to transfer blood; competition to secure camp sites with no new camps added; and no timely payment from hospitals with no point of contact.

Supply vs demand — Supply vs. demand — a predictable, seasonal gap

Donor journey

From ~100 surveyed/interviewed donors, the barriers to a potentially life-saving donation were: general lack of knowledge about the process and demand; no prior information on upcoming camps; fear of rejection at the campsite; inability to track donation dates; distance and time constraints; and no post-donation follow-up.

Recipient journey

When a recipient needs blood, families approach a bank and often end up paying a high price or finding replacement donors. Gaps: reliance on hospitals to find bags; no unified source on blood availability; no real-time donor tracking; lack of awareness in the issuing process; and difficulty finding donors, leading to high anxiety.

Problem statements & market analysis

Three opportunity areas

How might we enhance the experience of donors in order to retain them?

How might we achieve a balance between shortages and wastages of blood?

How might we ensure supply of blood at time of emergency in least time, effort and cost?

I analysed existing market solutions to understand their benefits and failures. Even good services failed in some way — because each catered to only one section of the chain.

The design solution

A holistic service connecting all three stakeholders

Rather than a point solution, I proposed a holistic service — an enterprise product owned by the blood bank and connected to both recipients and donors — with three subsystems:

Donor ↔ blood bank: a seamless blood-donation system with a doorstep-donation service.
Within the blood bank: a Smart Inventory Management System with effective distribution of donation camps using a prediction tool.
Recipient ↔ blood bank: an Emergency Request Service for recipients.

We conceptualized and designed all three subsystems and gathered user feedback. The second subsystem (within the blood bank) clicked with stakeholders and showed the most promise in feasibility, impact, and business viability.

Solution 2 — Smart Inventory + camp-prediction

The system works on a prediction tool with defined input/output parameters. Features include:

Predict future demand patterns from historical demand data
Set the minimum stock requirement for each blood group per month
Alert the in-charge about shortages of any blood type
Generate camp dates and the number of bags per blood group to collect
Decide camp locations by visualizing past donations and blood-group type on a city map
Facilitate communication between the camp organizer and on-site organizer
Pre-expiration alerts (15 days prior) to the in-charge
Coordinate between banks and hospitals to manage excess stock in time
Alert regular/registered donors and nearby colleges/industries near a campsite
Multiple-user login

Web portal wireframes — Wireframes of the web portal for inventory in-charge & camp organizer

My responsibilities & artifacts

What I owned as the designer

Design responsibilities

Led design research end to end: secondary research, ecosystem mapping
Ethnography — shadowing donors & nurses; 7 in-charge interviews; ~100 surveys
Empathy & affinity mapping across 5 lenses
Stakeholder mapping; demand/supply data analysis
Concepted 3 service subsystems; storyboards; touchpoint mapping
Designed the portal: wireframes → final UI & prediction/camp tools

Artifacts delivered

Ecosystem & stakeholder maps
Donor & recipient journey maps; empathy/affinity maps
Supply–demand data analysis & market analysis
Three-subsystem service blueprint & storyboards
Web-portal wireframes & high-fidelity UI (2 operator roles)
Prediction tool, camp-date generator, city heat map
Task-flow prototypes (video)

Impact as a designer

Approved by the city — and in execution

Impact of the solution — The impact the executed solution would create

Approved by the Nashik city council and currently in execution and growth phase — research translated into a deployed service.
Of three concept-tested subsystems, the smart-inventory + camp-prediction tool won on feasibility, impact, and business viability.
Reframed the problem from "recruit more donors" to "predict and plan supply" — a higher-leverage bet.
Designed for the real operators (inventory in-charge, camp organizer), not an idealized user.

Note: happy to share the other solutions (phase 1 and phase 3) that were explored but not implemented.