Investigation

Investigation methodology
The problem that my project aims to solve is currently faced by and
NGO(OneHealth Nigeria) and the wider public. This organisation and member of
the public will serve as my stakeholders for this solution. The NGO and the
general public both have di‫ח‬erent requirements for this solution as the solution
will be used in di‫ח‬erent ways by each group. Therefore it is necessary for me to
use a variety of investigation methods to obtain insights on each group's
understanding of their needs. Currently, the organisation is only able to
distribute information about its events and any emergencies via a Whatsapp
group which is very ine cient

Methods of investigation
I aim to use three main methods of investigation to gather information about
the requirements for this solution:

l. Firstly, due to one group of my stakeholders being the general public, a

survey is an appropriate approach to gather insights into the specific wants
of what general members of the public that might show interest in the
solution. This includes members of the public that would like to donate
blood, need blood or simply want to volunteer. I would also have a
separate survey for people who are already members of the organisation’s
whatsapp group that will allow me to gather information about their
opinions about the current system of passing information
2. Secondly, the organisation already has an existing website at onehealthls
. They also have a public Github repository to store their code(currently
private). This can be looked through to understand what the organisation
requires for the website
3. Thirdly, there are other organisations that also hold blood donation events:

NHS blood Donation

Global Blood Fund
Sickle Cell Society
I can perform a desk-base research to understand how other organisations
use their systems to manage things such as appointments and user
registration. This will also allow me to ascertain what features are the
most important to implement in my project or what features may be
unnecessary or counter-intuitive to producing the solution.
Survey
The questions:
The general Public:

l. Have you ever donated blood before? If no, is there specific reason?
2. If yes, On a scale of 0-4, how regularly do you make blood donations?
(0 means none; 4 is the maximum number of times we can donate a
year).
3. What features or functionalities on an application would encourage you
to make blood donations?

Users of the Current system :

l. On a scale of 1 to 5, how convenient would you say the current system is?(1
is very inconvenient , 5 very convenient)? Give a reason for your rating?

Conclusions:
The general public:

The conclusions from the survey can be broken down by question:

l. Out of all responses only 7% had ever donated blood to any organisation.
out of all the responses that replied 'No' to ever donating blood, 70% of
them replied that they didn't know where to donate to, 23% responded
that the process of blood donation in Nigerian hospitals was too verbose,
time- consuming and complex . This means that it is very important for the
system to be very concise and usability is a very crucial evaluation point.
2. To the second question, the general response was once a year. This
means that there is some engagement with blood donation, but it also
reveals that there might be a factor limiting people from donating more
every year.
3. For the third question, the most common responses were the ability to
book appointments online, the ability to be alerted when an event started
and have information about it. An interesting response that was sited was
some sort of rewarding system.

Users of the Current system :

l. The general response to this question was that it was very inconvenient. This
was mostly because there was very little that was doable from the whatsapp
group
Inspecting the existing(incomplete) website and
Github repository
On inspection of the Github repository and the current website, these were
some observations that were made:

Firstly, there were a lot of pages that were created and unused in the
website; most of the features that were expected from these pages were
incomplete. For example the ability to subscribe to a newsletter. The form
field was available on all pages but it was disabled.

This could be one of the factors that were limiting people from being aware
of any blood donation events.
Secondly, i also noticed that most of their methods of signing up to the
NGO always led to joining the Whatsapp group. And if you were trying to
donate, you couldn't schedule through the appointment or the whatsapp
group. You had privately message one of the administrators in order to let
them know, or wait for an event to begin.
 In addition, the performance of the website was very low. After trying out
the sign-up form for the volunteering process, it took about 9 seconds to
respond and redirect me to the welcome page.
Overall, there was a lack of completeness on the project. When i enquired
with one of the administrators, Abdullah, he responded that it was because
most of the administrators like himself were busy medical students. They
could only try to get a makeshift system running while slowly building up the
website.
As a result of the slow development process which has spanned over many
years, the project has been made redundant. This is because the code
became challenging to read due to lack of comments and documentation.
Even though, the project was still incomplete, there were some features that
could be identified that the organisation thinks will be useful such as
Scheduling donations
Signing up for a newsletter to learn about events and
seminars Signing up for volunteering

Desk-based research
There are a number of existing solutions to the problems in the form of websites
that allow people to schedule appointments for blood donations. Most of the
solutions i will investigate will have some variations in the objectives of the
organisation or the aims of the solution to my solution, however, they are still
useful to provide a good example of similar systems to my project that can be
used to identify and consider the advantages and disadvantages of di‫ח‬erent
approaches to the solution.
NHS Give blood:
Overview:
The NHS Give blood is a UK based blood donation branch of the National Health
Service. They not only o‫ח‬er blood donation but o‫ח‬er plasma donation services.
To begin donation users navigate to the website .

Interface

Login/Book an appointment

This provided a simple form dialogue which asked for the user's email and
password.
If the user didn't have one, they could create an account by navigating through
the sign up link. If they had forgotten their details they could also retrieve them.
The website does this by finding what piece of information they had forgotten

Then users go through a series of form dialogues that ask for the following
information:

First name
Last Name
Date of birth
Post code

Sign Up forms
The link to the sign up form navigates to a page that list some eligibility rules:

Then it takes the user through a series of form dialogues asking for the following
information:

Email address
If they have a donor ID
Then it sends an email with a verification link and asks the user to create and
confirm their password. It shows a list of requirements for users to create a
safe password
 After the user confirms their emails and passwords, they are taking through
a series of more form dialogues that enquire the following information:
Date of birth
First and Last
name Ethnicity
Phone number
Post code
Then it finally displays all of the users information for them to make any
changes.

User dashboard

Firstly, if a user is below, the age of 17, then it display a message of

temporary suspension telling them when they are allowed to donate blood
from
The user can access their appointment information if they have one. This is
displayed as card.

It allows the user to manage the appointment: To either reschedule it,

cancel it, or add it to their calendar.
Another feature of the user dashboard is the ability to book an
appointment. This navigates the user to a form dialogue where users can
input a town, city or postcode in England. The result is a list of venues:
On selection of a venue it navigates a user to a group of appointments
dates at that venue:

Some dates have limited time slots while others don't. On selection of an
appointment date, it allows the user to select a time slot:
 The appointment is then displayed on the card on the user's dashboard.
Another feature is donation credits. Every time a user donates blood they
receive donation credits, these credits are combined to form milestones
when a user has a certain number of credits. This results in di‫ח‬erent rewards
for each credit.

Accessibility

On inspecting the website using the web browser's inspection feature. There
were a lot of accessibility features that enables screen readers to read the web
page much easier. This includes adding "aria" tags that describe the role of each
form in the webpage's form dialogues. It also contains the state of certain input
methods such as if a drop down is open or closed:

Data Processing
There are multiple forms of data processing on the website. One form is the
account creation form which interacts with the user via a form dialogue, carries
out input validation on the inputs, sends the data to the backend which stores
the data on the database and resends the users information to be used on the
website. Another form is the appointment scheduling functionality which takes
in information about the user(their location and the time they would like) and
uses it to create an appointment for the user at the nearest blood donation
centre. It interacts with the backend database and returns information about the
appointment to be used in the user's dashboard.

IPSO Table

Input Process Storage Output

User Input validation Data is stored on User's information
information such as presence the database and
checks and type can be retrieved
checks. Data is via the backend
posted to the api
backend
Appointment Search for blood The appointment The appointment's
location donation centres is stored on information on
within a 10 mile backend database the user's
radius, then dashboard
records user's
selected time slot

Conclusion