Japan Association for Medical Informatics

[3-D-2-04] Design of a gamified mobile application that aims to improve temporary deferred donors’ intention to donate blood again

*Roberto Espinoza1, Luciano Santos1, Yukiko Mori1, Tomohiro Kuroda1 (1. Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University)

Blood Donation, Deferred Blood Donors, Gamification, Usability

The deferral experience – when a prospective donor is not able to donate for some reason – can affect the return rate of participants, especially in the groups of young and first-time donors. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) could be a tool to support deferred donors, in particular younger ones, who are more familiar with technology. Although previous research has applied ICT to support blood donors in general, there are no previous ICT projects that focus on supporting deferred donors. In this paper, we describe a gamified mobile application, designed based on previous works in the blood donation field, and on the results of a survey about the perspective of Japanese citizens regarding the deferral experience and ICT. Three core objectives were considered: to give relevant information, to allow for casual interaction, and to motivate the use of the future ICT systems or tools. Seven key features were designed for the application, as to integrate the core objectives previously mentioned. They can be labeled as Login Reward, News Post, Discussion Post, Quizzes, Social Poll, User Alarms and Avatar/Character Progress. These features were modeled considering the concepts of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation from the Self-Determination Theory, as it has previous application in the formation of habits and in the encouragement of engagement of the individuals. In future works, the effectiveness of the proposed application could be tested, as to evaluate if it can significantly contribute to improve the intention to donate again of deferred donors.