You are a new PM at Facebook. Design an app to help people save money.

 Clarifying questions:

Specific platform?

Specific marketplace?

App = software?

The goal is to increase users savings only or also help them to use money more effectively/invest it etc?

Separate app or in FB/Instagram?

FB mission: provide tools to build communities and bring the world closer together

App’s goal: Help users to save money (and invest it wisely?) by providing education, tools, and supportive community.

User groups:

1.     General population using FB

a.     Financially educated users – size:small

b.    Users with some knowledge about their finances and appropriate financial management – size: arge

c.     No knowledge about finances – size: small

2.     Government bodies

3.     Banks/financial institutions

Select a group based on 1) size 2) impact 3) urgency (scale of pain) => selected users with some education (1.b.)

User Needs/pain points:

Prioritize based on 1)impact, 2)pain

1.     How to manage my expenses/ stay in budget? I:High, P:High

2.     How much should I strive to save every month/year? I:M, P:M-H

3.     What do I need to save for? I: H, P: H

a.     Pension?

b.     Education?

c.     Car?

d.     Real-estate?

e.     Vacation?

4.     What tools I have to save money? I:M, P:M

a.     Do they cost anything?

b.     Which one is the best in terms of value?

c.     Tax break options?

1,2, and 3 are the most significant pains with the highes potential impact.

Solutions:

Prioritize based on 1)Value to user 2)effort of development/cost

1.     How to manage my expenses/ stay in budget? 

a.     Expense tracker – either integrate with an existing tool/CC/bank to user can insert manually. FB will benchmark if the expense category is too high based on best practices/averages and provide ideas on how to save on this segment

                                               i.     V: M, E:M

b.     Open a video education channel and invite experts to upload content – like a “saving/stay in budget channel” (solves for both 1 & 3)

                                               i.     V:M-H, E:L

c.     Open a marketplace for budget coachers

                                               i.     V:L, E: L-M

d.     Peer-to-peer match for coaching. Open a volunteer center to match between power financial users and non-power ones. Provide the volunteers badges for social proof like “help people save money”

                                               i.     V:M, E: M

2.     How much should I strive to save every month/year? 

3.     What do I need to save for? 

a.     Create a financial profile (solves for both 1 & 2 & 3)– users can provide rough estimate of net income and expenses. They can also specify goals like “buy a house” “open a business” etc. The tool will recommend savings funds based on their goals, recommended rates for each based on net income, projections on how much the savings will be worth in X years (or when they will be able to buy a house in theory), and how much they need to strive shrinking their expenses.

                                               i.     I:H , E: M-H

Select a solution + MVP:

I selected - Open a video education channel and invite experts to upload content – like a “saving/stay in budget channel”

This solution has high impact, low effort, and utilizes FB exsiting asserts. If I had more time/resources I might have gone with the financial profile.

MVP: 

1.     Identify influencers and invite them to post videos/stories in the new platform

2.     Create news-feed with uploaded content. Use ML to prioritize the most interesting/helpful ones to the top

3.     Allow to search based on hashtags/areas of intrest (influencers can hashtag their videos)

4.     Allow users to feedback videos based on how helpful they were (beyond like/reaction) – consider a short survey afterwards.

Metrics:

1.     Activation – exposure to the new app

2.     DAU

3.     Ave # of video views per user

4.     Rating of videos' helpfulness

Clarification - 

Save money can be done in couple of ways - 

1. Helping people spend less

   1. Better deals on everyday items 

   2. Financial planning tools

   3. Lower interest on loans

   4. On rent

2. Helping people earn more 

   1. New revenue stream

   2. Earn more on interest 

We will focus on 1 as that’s something that everyone can participate in - ie will have better reach. 

Goal of the app - help people spend less by leveraging the power of FB network

Who are we designing this app for?

1. People who live pay-check to pay-check (Impact: H, Reach: H)

2. People who have stable incomes and little bit of savings (I:M, R: H)

3. People who have disposable income (I:L, R:L)

4. Students who do not have any income (I:H, R:M)

We will focus on 1 - as that has the highest impact and moderate reach.

User needs - 

1. How do i spend less on groceries but ensure my family has food on the table (Impact: H, Reach: H)

2. How do i spend less on rent but ensure my family has a reasonable accommodation (Impact: H, Reach: H)

3. How do i spend less on gas / commute (Impact: M, Reach: H)

4. How do i reduce my mortgage / credit card loans (Impact: H, Reach: M)

5. How do i ensure my kids get good education without spending (Impact: H, Reach: M)

Solutions - 

1. Enable local grocery stores to share coupons on FB

   1. Coupon center on FB

   2. Customers can clip coupons & present to grocery stores in check out

   3. Gamify it - so that customers who use coupons more often can get additional benefits

2. Tie up with NGOs who can donate groceries -

   1. Create an inventory of NGOs who donate food

   2. Make it easy to find the NGO closest to the customer

3. Tie up with govt agencies to find affordable housing

   1. Create an on-boarding wizard that asks few questions and recommends options affordable housing

   2. Helps customers get loans by reaching to the banks

4. Portal for customers to enter their income and detailed expenditures. Use ML /  AI to recommend a financial plan that tells them how much they should be saving in order to meet their future financial goals. Also, use this info anonymously to present to them the average expenses of families similar to theirs, to give them a perspective of if they are doing well or worse.

I would recommend option 1 as that has the most impact, is moderately difficult to build (requires integration with grocers) and has an aspect of gamification that incentivizes savings. 

Risk of the solution is that it needs partnership with businesses. Without that, the feature wont be successful.

Key metrics - 

1. Primary - DAU - What % of FB customers use this feature daily? (Use = browse, clip, checkout)

2. Secondary - coupon savings / customer, repeat rate, % of customers getting additional savings

• Young people main focal areas will be financial saving - awareness, education, exposure to tools and process
• Have less money: They either get a allowance or earn less
• Want to learn about smart saving tools and process
• Connect with friends / communities that have same goals and objective
• Want to set personal goals and meet those targets
• want to share their learning 
• want to build a strong creditscore 
• want to cover and pay their outstanding loans such as student loans, creit card loans etc
• want to buget and undertsnf their spendings

• have big saving goals - want to save money for house, car, wedding, future education
• optimize their budget and learn better tools and process
• want to learn and get better at investments - market
• want to know how their friends are doign
• want to effectivey plan for retirement 

• want to know how to best plan for speding their savings 
• want to collbarate in saving w/ their children

Let’s assume we are building a Facebook app and the purpose of the app is to help its users save money.

When I think about the persona’s interested in this service, I can think of a few user groups:

– Teens (pre-college) – They are not responsible for making money. They have very limited budget and sometimes get pocket money.

– College Students – They have limited budget but they do receive grants, loans, financial help from parents they sometimes earn small payments to pay for their living expenses

– University graduates – They work and make money. They spend time into financial planning and career planning. They have more complex financial lives.

For this case, I’m going to focus on the “students” group. I think it’s an interesting group to explore. They are tech and active on the social media. They have fairly simple financial life, making it easier for us to launch a new product.

When I think about the needs of the students, I can think of a few use cases:
– They receive grants and loans from university
– They usually pay rent
– They eat lots of fast food / cheap food
– They go out with their friends a lot and can spend a lot of money on socializing
– They sometimes don’t have any experience in making money
– They share expenses with their roommates
– They work in the summer to save some money to be able to pay for their school year expenses

Now, I’d like to brainstorm a few ideas to solve for some of the use cases listed above:

Idea 1 – A tool that uses student’s social media activities to score their likelihood of returning loans. Pass this information to the banks and obtain low interest fee loans for them
Idea 2 – Enable Facebook friends to create a group and compete with each other on reaching saving targets
Idea 3 – Gamify saving by enabling users to earn badges for reaching certain financial targets
Idea 4 – Connect with their bank account, analyze their historical expenses, estimate money needed for the future (rent, food, etc), and send warnings over Facebook Messenger if they go over budget
Idea 5 – Spending breakdown – Show breakdown of your expenses and show where you’re spending more than your Facebook friends

Now, I would like to evaluate each of these ideas based on impact on customer experience and cost of implementation.
Idea 1 – High on consumer impact, very expensive as you need to work with the banks
Idea 2 – Medium value to consumer (it can be fun and engaging), medium cost (develop capability to create groups, connect to banks to download statements, and create UI for the users)
Idea 3 – Low value to customer (badges are valuable if they can be shared. People are private about their financial status), low cost of implementation
Idea 4 – Low impact on customer (their banks can offer this. There is nothing unique about the service), low cost of implementation
Idea 5 – High value on consumer (it helps them see how they are doing compared to their friends), Medium cost

Out of the ideas above, I would focus on building a product that uses features 2 and 5. My MVP will include idea 5 and my V2 will have idea 2. To build the MVP, I would enable the user to connect to connect their Facebook Money Save app to be able to download statements and analyze transactions, categorize them, and compare users’ financial behaviors. The product will enable a Facebook user to invite their friends to the app and start comparing their financial lives with each other. For example, it will say 30% of your spending was on food last month whereas only 20% of your friend’s spending was on food. This product can be expanded to many additional features over time. Here are a list of few:
– Invite users to congratulate each other for reaching certain financial targets
– Enable users to give feedback to each other like “here is how I reduced my spending on food”
– Allow users to challenge each other (e.g. reduce next month’s entertainment spending by 20%)