Bloodworks Northwest: The Next GenZ Donor Experience
Alongside BloodWorks Northwest
Timeline
Spring 2026 - Fall 2026
Summary
Every 1 in 7 patients need blood transfusion, but the next generation of donors are not showing up. During our 10 week collaboration with Bloodworks Northwest, I worked alongside 4 designers to research, design, and ship an engagement ecosystem that drove an increase of 67% engagement rate with the GenZ donors.
My Roles
I was the Lead Coordinator and UX Designer of this project. My main role was defining the product experiences on social media through interactive prototyping and animation. I also coordinated and lead meetings with Bloodworks' Design, Research, and Marketing Teams to align on project and business goals.
Outcomes
+67%
engagement rate amongst GenZ audiences on social media.
+400%
click-through rate in the eligibility test.
+304%
non-followers reached through the new engagement post
At a Glance
Building the next generation of donors
Transforming how blood donation is perceived by GenZ
The new Bloodworks GenZ engagement ecosystem is a series of interactive experiences across multiple mediums that encourages young adults to take the first into blood donation.
Interactive forms of "Code Red"
What if Code Red was something interactive and physical? Awareness is often the first step of blood donation, so we designed two creative forms of motion posters that could be placed within the existing journeys of our audiences and trigger behavioral change.
Designing contents that resonate with "the GenZ language"
A big part of this project was designing the experience that resonates with GenZ potential donors. We explored various interactive forms of educational contents through vibe coding, and created actual workable prototypes that could be tested and iterated!
Challenge
Bloodworks wanted to improve GenZ's donation center experience to boost donation rate, only there weren't donors to start with…
The problem wasn't donating blood,
The problem was becoming the donor.
We entered the project expecting to redesign the donor center. Instead, our research showed that the donor center was one of Bloodworks' greatest strengths. The larger challenge was building relationships before donation ever occurred.
People support blood donation but rarely act.
Social influence matters more than incentives.
The donor center experience is already working.
Gen Z doesn't see themselves in Bloodworks.
Revised Design Question
What should Bloodworks really be solving?
Instead of going along with their initial ask, we proposed the revised design question backed with our research, which gained consensus amongst the Bloodworks team.
We hypothesized a complete journey that would engage GenZ
The process of coming up with design principles was revealing the WHY behind GenZ's hesitation and hurdles towards blood odnation, and transforming them into high-level HOWs that are broad enough for ideation, whilst being specific to keep the designs grounded in solving the right problem.
Iteration: The second pivot
We tried building a website
Our first concept was an educational website that guides GenZ donors throughout the donation experience. During critiques, we realized a website itself does not drive enough engagement. So we took a step back and decided to pivot on building an ecosystem rather than a single product.
Product Ecosystem
Designs that embody Bloodworks
After rounds of ideation and iteration, we defined 3 core components of our project. My role focused mainly on branding development, motion design, and the social media campaign.
Design Highlights
My contributions
Significant boost in audience engagement
While we were not able to implement all of our designs in real world, I lead and executed the social media campaign that received significant results and validation. This idea was included in future marketing strategies by the marketing team.
Storytelling the journey
Our final design consist of multiple components. I planned, animated, and delivered this concept video that guided Bloodworks on how the ecosystem works together.
The next steps
I'm proud to say that our innovative ideas have proven not only to be effective to the GenZ audiences, but also opened up the perspectives of how blood donation can be perceived in the age of AI and design!
The CEO of Bloodworks Northwest visiting out booth and sharing thoughts of satisfaction and encouragment!