NHS organ transportation bag

Improving UX, saving lives.

A collaborative re-design of the NHS Blood and Transplant Organ Donor Register website.

Usability is everything. And, when it comes to the NHS, it can save lives.

This was demonstrated in dramatic fashion shortly after the Beta launch of our newly designed organ donation website for the NHS Blood & Transplant service.


Just four months after launch, results showed:

    • 100% increase in registration conversions via mobile device

    • 50% increase in registration conversions via desktop

    • 5,000 out of 7,000 users who initially selected ‘no I don’t want to donate my organs’ changed their decision and recorded their wish to be a donor

    • 0.2% of users registered their decision to not donate

NHS blood and transplant case management challenge nicely presented the UK and the UK automation is a good idea, but actually signed up to the organ donor register. How do we get the other 66% to sign up to the register. There are currently 10s of 1000s of people with chargebacks sandbox. And we wanted to cut that number down drastically. Before we started the existing registration process, I found it slightly complex, and so it’s currently in beta we’ve seen 100% uplift and lower illustrations 50% uplift in desktop registration. And after 7000 users, initially selecting. No, I don’t want to donate my organs, or 2000, these belong to register for a few students. Once presented with further information will still not be afraid to be able to contribute to a cause to see some changes.

With 21 million registrants, the Organ Donor Register is the biggest voluntary database of its kind in the UK and the website is core to allowing people to register their donation decision.


Using the ‘power of two’ for a streamlined and efficient design process

To maximise efficiency, our UX consultant and designer worked together in a “power of two” dynamic. This allowed ideas to be generated, discussed and validated in a creative and collaborative environment before being presented. It also allowed the project team to be adaptive, overcoming challenges as they arose.

Our initial designs were based on research already undertaken and provided to us by the NHS. This included the results of a ‘discovery’ phase with workshops and user testing at the Government Digital Services (GDS) user lab.

Sprint-based rapid prototyping, validated with user testing over a period of six weeks, also ensured the final solution was delivered in line with real user feedback and needs.

Once the final prototype had been thoroughly tested, NHSBT used it to develop a new fully mobile responsive website. This too happened through a series of sprints, allowing insight from on-going user research and testing to feed into the final release.

Achieving more than just ‘sign here’

  • The project was about more than simply increasing the number of registrants on the Organ Donor Register. Our remit included (and achieved):

  • Enabling users to make an informed choice about their donation preferences

  • Allowing users to manager their preferences, including updating details, registering not to be a donor and withdrawing data from the register

  • Aligning with the NHS Blood & Transplant’s wider digital strategy

  • Meeting a December 2015 deadline to allow for new legislation coming into force in Wales

Let's work together

We believe that creating groundbreaking experiences that make measurable differences in the way people live takes a special type of collaboration. Our team designs impactful experiences by leaning on the variety of capabilities and expertise within Nomensa to ensure our solution is bespoke to your needs. We believe collaboration is key, let’s work together.

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UX Design

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