This case study highlights the UX design work conducted as part of a SCAD Capstone project during the Senior Studio: Prototype for Humanity course, led by Professor Byeong Cheol (BC) Hwang, a former UX Senior Director at the Samsung Mobile UX Innovation Lab.
The current organ procurement and transplantation system is plagued by inefficiencies, resulting in a 1 in 5 chance that a viable organ will not reach its intended recipient. Research from Johns Hopkins University reveals that over 28,000 viable organs are wasted each year, preventing countless life-saving transplants. This project aims to address these systemic failures to create a more efficient and reliable organ donation network.
My design process always begins with understanding the core problem. I believe meaningful solutions emerge from deeply understanding users and synthesizing research data. This foundation ensures we address the right issues before ideating solutions. For this project, we began with extensive secondary research on U.S. organ donation processes, then conducted primary research with field professionals to gain direct insights.
We dedicated over 10 hours to learning from Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) and transplant surgeons, studying their pain points, workflows, and key challenges. We aimed to understand their perspective and daily realities—insights that couldn't come from research papers alone. This immersion gave us a profound understanding of the issues they face.
Our synthesis revealed key themes, gaps, and areas for improvement that highlighted the root causes of organ discards. This research formed our project's foundation, transforming raw data into actionable insights. By translating findings into needs, behaviors, and problem statements—while involving stakeholders early—we ensured alignment throughout the team.
We transformed our problem statements into "How Might We" (HMW) questions to drive innovation and guide our design process. I explored a wide range of potential solutions, pushing boundaries regardless of immediate feasibility. This approach helped us challenge the status quo and consider novel design solutions.
Our team then evaluated these solutions based on feasibility, resources, and timelines to identify the most promising options. We conducted user studies to understand which ideas resonated and why, ensuring our chosen solutions were grounded in user insights.
We explored solutions across various parts of the organ procurement journey, including competitor analysis, global donation processes, and emerging technologies. Our focus remained on incorporating these technologies into a user-friendly product for OPOs.
The process was highly iterative rather than linear. Our discussions with stakeholders, particularly UNOS Labs (United Network for Organ Sharing), revealed new insights we hadn't discovered during initial research. These meetings led to significant refinements in our design direction. Business goals, constraints, and assumptions shaped our final design, aligning with UNOS's mission of saving lives through innovation and effective resource management.
UNOS evaluates innovation proposals based on their alignment with core values—stewardship, unity, trust, excellence, and accountability. They prioritize solutions that improve patient outcomes, enhance patient experience, or reduce administrative burden. The UNOS Labs business lead confirmed that our solution met many of their evaluation criteria, validating its potential to support their goals.
This process guided us from problem understanding to solution validation. Through close stakeholder collaboration and continuous iteration based on real-world feedback, we developed a solution aimed at creating meaningful change in the organ donation and transplantation system.
A key takeaway from this project is the critical importance of creating a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) that focuses on essential features, making the design process more approachable for both users and stakeholders. Clear communication of ideas and design solutions is crucial, not only to ensure that the design meets user needs but also to align it with business goals and make it easier for stakeholders to understand the value of the solution.
Another important lesson was the value of validating concepts through user feedback. I found that speaking directly with professionals and learning about their day-to-day workflows was essential. Getting into their mindset and understanding human behaviors—like the need for verbal confirmation despite digital notifications—helped shape the solution. This is a behavior often overlooked when creating digital systems. In the case of organ procurement, trust is paramount, and the human touch in collaboration is necessary to build and maintain that trust. While systems may be automated and streamlined, it’s clear that people are still reluctant to rely solely on digital tools for such critical decisions.
Even with automated notifications between transplant centers and OPOs, professionals still prefer calling to double-check confirmation. This behavior, rather than streamlining, adds an additional step to the process. This reinforced the need to design systems that allow for human interaction when it’s most needed, before automation takes over. It’s about finding the right balance between efficiency and human interaction, ensuring that the system supports trust and effective decision-making without causing friction or unnecessary steps.
In critical fields where time is of the essence, and decisions often come down to a simple “yes” or “no,” it’s important to design solutions that not only streamline processes but also enhance communication and trust between the involved parties. Human interaction remains an essential component, especially when final decisions rest on the accuracy of the data and the confidence that both parties have in each other’s judgment.
