Design a news aggregation service specifically tailored for the elderly market.

Clarifying questions

-          News aggregation signifies that news from various sources are club under a single source à Right

-          Shall I assume the geography as India à Yes

-          I am the PM at Microsoft à Yes

-          Any resource or time constraints à No

-          What age group are you looking when you talk about elderly market à Let’s say 55+

-          Elderly are not suffering from medical conditions related to vision, mobility etc à No

Goal of the product

-          Provide a single platform for all the news for elderly

Does that goal seems fine or you have something else in mind

User segment

Since we are talking about elderly people there still are certain sub-segments that I want to deep-dive into

1. Elderly people in rural areas

2. Elderly people in cities

There are comparatively higher chances that elderly living in cities might know English. So as an MVP, I am planning to implement a solution in English and then we can move towards more accessible vernacular approach

Pain points / Need

Elderly people in cities needs news aggregation

There are various options such as TVs, classic newspaper and nowdays apps that provides news from all over the world.

1. Not Personalized

2. Problem of many

3. Auto-pilot in scrolling and seeing video

Out of these pain-points, I guess most pressing one is being not personalized

1. Stay updated

2. Activity to spend time

3. Nugget for discussion

In my view staying updated is the most pressing needs for the elderly. As I can imagine my parents are above 55+ they kept themselves updated

Solutions

1. Action based personalization [ Impact – M | Effort – M]

-          Web based solution in Edge

-          Scrubs your browser history and understand the personality

-          Start giving recommendation on news.

-          Track engagement and keep learning

2. User input personalization [ Impact – M | Effort – L]

-          Mobile app

-          While registering you can put you interests, countries or location (as children may be in other places)

-          Gives suggestions based on the input and start learning on its own

3. Listening buddy [ Impact – M | Effort – M]

-          AI based interactive app

-          Some starters news based on your location.

-          Ask about the location preferences

-          Start talking about various issues/ places etc

-          Gets personalized and also share video and article links to go through

-          It can also switch to the typing mode

Key metrics

1.      # Active users

2.      # Active sessions

3.      Activities / session

a.      Link clicked

b.      Voice interactions

4.      Relevance (%)

a.      Proxy à people looking for less than 10 seconds