How would you improve Facebook for commuters?

2. Goal and alignment to mission
What's our goal when we say "improve"? I would assume we want to increase engagement from that particular segment, so all the regular engagement metrics (posts, shares, reactions, stories, messeges, etc) - for commuters. Also, obviously we want to stay aligned with the FB mission of helping build communities and bringing people closer together, so in my discussion I will focus more on solutions that are more aligned with this mission.

3. Segmentation

When we're thinking of commuters, we can break that segment further down:

People who commute to work regularly
People who commute to school regularly
Infrequent commuters (e.g. occasional trip on public transportation or taxi/uber) for errands (e.g. hospital, bank, etc)
Infrequent commuters for leisure (e.g theater, restaurant, etc)

4. Pain points

I feel like each segment might have very different pain points, so I'd like to focus on the segment which can drive the biggest impact - both by user reach and by the significance of the pain.
I'll focus on regular work commuters, since unlike others - a larger % of them has longer and more frequent commute (students usually live close to their schools, and infrequent commuters are ... well, infrequent).

I'll further narrow down to people who use a bus or a train (rather than taxi/uber). The reason is that FB's strategic strength is in content and entertainment. Pains related to that are actually shared among all commuters, while if we limit the scope to uber riders, we might find ourselves designing an Uber competing app, which would not be aligned well with FB's competency areas.

To identify the pain points, I'll briefly outline the user journey:

Arrive to the bus/train station
Wait for the transport
Hop on and pay (if not prepaid in advance for multiple rides)
Ride
Get to the required station and hop off
Arrive to destination

I'll assume that the journey is fairly similar between A to B and B to A.

Let me map the pain points, relevant to each stage:

Sometimes to arrive to a station, people need to use taxi/uber/other means of short-term transportation - those have additional fees associated with them.
Waiting
1. How long is the wait?
2. I might immerse myself in reading a post/story and miss my bus/train
Payment (if not prepaid)
1. might be cumbersome - some transport requires exact change
2. don't want to be a blocker in the line while I'm looking for the money
Ride
1. want to entertain myself
2. want to educate myself, so I get to work smarter
Get to station, hop off - afraid to miss the stop (either a first timer or because immersed in phone, or sleepy)
Arrive to destination - same problem as 1

5. Solutions

FB could promote groups that help people find co-riders, in order to reduce the total fee for short-term transport
waiting
1. Could integrate with popular transportation services to show the wait time based on location
2. Same - with a push notification for when the bus/train arrives - probably only when the headphones are in use (otherwise it's hard to miss a bus/train and we don't want to spam with notifications)
payment - less of focus here, since it doesn't directly contribute to the mission of creating more engagement.
1. I believe most frequent commuters would actually use a prepaid solution
2. same.
Ride
1. For entertainment we can tweak the newsfeed algrorithm to push stories focused on news or on the place of work of the person.
2. For education, promote posts relevant to the field of work of the user and prioritize ads related to courses in the field.
3. While commuting, a lot of people have to stand and hold to something, making it harder to use the phone screen. Therefore, a potential solution might be a feature to read posts aloud, making them similar to podcasts and audible via headphones.
Hop off - Especially for when wearing headphones - sound an audio cue based on the bus/train location and the station where the user usually gets off (according to previous location history, not for first timers) - to alarm about arrival.

6. Evaluation and prioritization

solution	cost	benefit	total score
1. co-riders	UI changes: would require users to opt-in to ride sharing group and disclose location and destination, which might be a big privacy concern and at these times would be problematic. The actual technical solution, leveraging the user graph, should be fairly easy, but because of the high risks around privacy, I rank is as HIGH	People already leveraging various ways to find co-riders and FB is not necessarily top of mind for such feature. Therefore ranking as LOW	LOW
2.1 wait time	Again, would require location sharing, but at least not with other people. API integration with buses/trains should be easy. However, the UI work to add the waiting time without creating clutter is not trivial. MEDIUM	Not sure it's the highest on priority list for commuters LOW	LOW
2.2	Same as above concerns, but without the UI challenge. Still, vendor management, etc- MEDIUM	LOW	LOW
3 Payments	deprioritized
4.1 entertainment	There's probably already a developed ranking system for posts, so adding this bit of logic should be simple. LOW	Having posts that are more relevant to the commute time is great, more attention = more engagement (comments, shares, reacts), hence categorize this as HIGH	HIGH
4.2 education	Same as above and we know where the person works. LOW	HIGH	HIGH
4.3 audible	This would require new tech development, however would also be a strategic investment to stay ahead of the innovation curve and gain share from others in the audible field, such as music, news and podcasts apps. HIGH	HIGH	MED
5. cue	The UI for configuring this function would be non-trivial. HIGH	LOW	LOW

Based on this, the priority would be to focus on tweaking the feed logic to contain more posts related to the place of work or educational areas related to the field of work for the person. Additional strategic investment would be to develop or acquire tech for text-to-speech conversion and allow the option of reading the posts out loud during the commute.

7. Metrics to watch

For posts - the regular metrics we watch when we improve posts recommendations: # of shares/reacts/comments per post, as opposed to previous logic (AB test between two similar commuter groups should be easy since it's confined to a per-person feed).

Also time spent in app during the commute app - would show us how much more relevant the posts where. DAU and MAU for users with the new logic, to see if they keep coming back.

For the audible feature - % of commuters using the feature. Also would be interesting to see the usage of the feature outside of commute time. Keep an eye on metrics for other content such as stories, to make sure there was no cannibalization - since we want to increase engagement, it's not enough to increase our share of the pie, we want to increase the whole pie.

8. Summary

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fifadude · Answer 2 · 2020-03-29T08:45:20+0000

Product description

Facebook creates a virtual community for its users

Scope clarification

Commuter is anyone going from homebase to work/school, and returning back to home on regular basis on weekdays. Clarify - is this a reasonable definition of commuter?

Here we are referring strictly to classic FB, not other portfolio like instagram, whatsapp. Clarify - if its ok to restrict to FB only

During commute, FB would be used on personal devices, so mobile app is the platform to improve (amongst desktop, and mobile web). Clarify - is it ok to focus only on mobile app?

Commute patterns vary differently based on region/location. USA being one of largest market, and my own familiarity, I would prefer to focus on USA. Clarify - is it ok to focus only on USA

Since FB is universally adopted across all possible segments, the best area to improve would be engagement (amongst awareness, acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, referral). Clarify - if its ok to focus on engagement

Let's focus on improving the engagement of FB mobile app users in USA who commute on regular basis

Choosing metrics to improve

FB would like to have it users interact more with each other, to build a sense of community at all time - including commuting. Key KPIs to representing engagement would be

Reading posts
Reacting to posts from others
Posting

Let's focus on getting the commuters to read/react/post more often while commuting. Clarify - is this acceptable scope to focus on?

User group selection

I'd divide commuters into these buckets

Self-driving: who have access to mobile but can't use the apps in regular manner during commute due to safety reasons
Public transporters: who can easily use the FB app during commute, in their personal space

Since only 5% of US commuters use public transport, I see lots of upside on focusing in rest 95% who actually can't use FB during commute. Clarify - is this right group to focus on?

Use cases & Pain points

Let's walk through self-driving commuters' journey step by step

Getting ready to commute in time -- too busy to actually glace at FB
Driving to work/school -- plenty of time but can't read the mobile screen
Choosing a return time while at work -- would like to syncup with family & friends for social planning after work hours, will check FB periodically
Driving back to home -- again has time, and desire but doesn’t engage with

I'd choose to focus on enabling engagement during actual drive - as users would like to actively use FB as there is lot of leisure time, and strong desire to interact; but restricted by safety issues. Clarify - is this right pain point to focus on?

Solution hypothesis

Make FB voice enabled for reading
Make FB voice enabled for reading & liking
Make FB voice enabled for posting
Make FB skip posts that are difficult to read - too long, visual heavy with images, videos
Integrate with navigation apps to understand the commute start/stop
Easy posting of commute relevant updates on family group e.g. running late, should I pickup Chinese tonight, pls vote.
Creating ads that are well suited for audio

Evaluate solutions

Make FB voice enabled for reading	Does not meet MVP - users are unlikely to go back to posts again to show their likes. w/o that we lose on critical part of FB usage.
Make FB voice enabled for reading & liking	P0 - This is good functionality to overcome the safety issue, and accomplish most frequent JTBD for FB users
Make FB voice enabled for posting	Inclination to post would come only after good adoption to read during commute, so will not make it part of 1st iteration
Make FB skip posts that are difficult to read - too long, visual heavy with images, videos	Without this the experience while listening to feeds would be extremely poor, and will cause churn in engagement, hence should be part of MVP - P0
Integrate with navigation apps to understand the commute start/stop	Will reduce the adoption barrier by automatically triggering FB on start of commuting, and keeping it in correct mode while commuting. Navigations are necessary app on commute, FB can't replace them but has to piggyback on them - P1
Easy posting of commute relevant updates on family group e.g. running late, should I pickup Chinese tonight, pls vote.	Inclination to post would come only after good adoption to read during commute, so will not make it part of 1st iteration
Creating ads that are well suited for audio only experiences	Advertisers would come only after good adoption to read during commute, so will not make it part of 1st iteration - also this affects revenue, and not engagement.

Clarify - voice enabling for FB app for reading apps, and liking with a good experience. Is that a good MVP scope?

Performance Metrics

Usage of FB during commute hours for each region, weekdays - goes up
# users who use FB while commuting - goes up
# % reactions on posts by user during commute - at par with % reaction during non commute

H P · Answer 3 · 2020-03-03T08:34:50+0000

Disclaimer: I have stopped using Facebook since 2011, so excuse if some of the features are tried by FB in the past few years. These are just my thoughts on answering this type of product improvement question.

Scope:

By commuters, we mean people who travel from point A to point B on a public transport/cabs/self- driven cars etc. i.e. anyone who's not driving a vehicle, since we don’t want to distract driver, right?

Answer: Yes, that's the target audience

By improvement, what do we mean? Are we trying to improve user engagement (DAU) or any other metric like time spent per day?

Answer: Yes, we want to increase the MAU by 5% and for existing users, the time spent needs to be increased by 10%

Ok, here's the scope of the problem:

We want to increase the MAU for Facebook by 5% and time spent for existing users by 10%; by targeting the "commuter" user base

User base:

We have various type of commuter users

Work commuters (9-5): Travels to and from office/college/university/school on every weekday
Heavy commuters : Always on the field/work involves commuting (e.g. Sales people, delivery folks etc.)
Casual commuters: Commute based on the need (retired folks, people working from home etc.; usually 3-4 times a week)

I will select the #1 group, as from all the commuter group, it consists of a big chunk (70% based on my assumption), have a consistent commute pattern

Use cases:

For the users in the work commuter group, here are the user needs

The user would like to use the commute time in learning a new skill
The user would like to use the commute time in reading/listening to a book
The user would like to be aware about any commute disruptions or anything that would cause a delay to ETA
The user would like to listen to the music
The user would like to keep himself updated about the latest happening in the field of interest e.g. Economics/Politics/Sports etc.
The user would like to meet new people for socializing/dating who commute on the same route daily
The user would like to plan their To-Dos list in office/University
The users would like to check their office emails
The users would like to plan their grocery or other purchases during the commute time
The users would like to play games on their devices

From the above list, we'll prioritize #1, 2, 4, 6, 7 as those would have maximum impact to the targeted metrics in my opinion

Solutions:

#	Solution	Effort	Helps increase MAU	Helps increase time spent
1	The user would like to use the commute time in learning a new skill FB can provide a learning section wherein a lot of learning content can be hosted in the areas like technology skills, languages etc. that can interest existing as well as new users to stay engaged and also help FB make some revenue in the process (from the content consumers or ads)	H	Yes	Yes
2	The user would like to use the commute time in reading/listening to a book FB can provide a book store or integration with online book stores so that users can read or listen to the content at cheaper rates from within FB and can share the book progress, quotes etc. on the wall and thereby helping the book sales in turn. This can bring in new users as well and some revenue from the content consumer	M	Yes	Yes
3	The user would like to listen to the music FB can create integration with music streaming services like Spotify so that users don’t have to switch between apps. Users can manage the playlist, see what other users in the circle are listening to. Have some existing FB users subscribe to music streaming service, make some commission on the revenue	M	May be	Yes
4	The user would like to meet new people for socializing/dating who commute on the same route daily FB can provide suggestions of the people who take similar route/bus/subway while commuting. It can provide dating service as well by having people express interest to meet those people	L	May be	Yes
5	The user would like to plan their To-Dos list in office/University FB can provide a planner section to have people list down the to-do's from office, personal day to day tasks or other notes etc. by pinging/saying it to the F-Bot, which arranges everything in order and shows a timeline view in FB This can help people organize themselves better and if the application is better, it can help acquire new users	H	Yes	Yes

Amongst the above solutions, we can start with #2 and #4 to begin with as those require relatively low effort and addresses both the improvement metrics we are looking at.

Based on the change in metrics if any, we can then experiment with other options.

Increased time spent can be measured by measuring time spent on the new features during the commute time (assuming location is ON, or by evaluating the time spent on the feature on a particular time of the day everyday through the device)

MAU can be measured by measuring the new sign ups which spends time on the new feature or increased activity from existing users on account of new features.

This can help us measure the success of these features.

productmanager123 · Answer 4 · 2021-08-08T01:54:31+0000

Scope:

Assuming its Facebook.com mobile app.

Commuters: Assuming its for people commuting to office and are interactive with FB. Basically we are not considering people who are driving, right?

Structure: We have a clear high level segment defined.

1/ Whats our goal? a/ New customer acquisition b/ Engagement c/ Monetization?

Assuming its engagement since if engagement is high, others will happen.

2/ Will look at Customer segments, key use cases, pain points, and then come up with solutions with maximum impact w.r.t increasing overall engagement.

Assuming we are focused on US. Is that OK?

There are two way to approach this problem:

a/ We can start with facebook users who already use facebook during commute, look at what they are doing with FB and improve those experiences.

b/ Or we can look at what do users want to do during commute, strive to build an experience to address that need - which FB may not may not even do right now.

I think (b) is more interesting since we are focusing the overall user need and working backwards as opposed to getting constrained with what FB is doing right now, and how users are currently using FB during commutes.

Customer segments:

1/ Largest customer segment, are people who use public transport

2/ Next, people who use shared transport such as carpool, uber etc

Another way to segment

1/ Customers who spend in commute for more than 30min one way

2/ Less than 30min

Lets focus on users who use public transport - I think thats larger segment, also I think they spend more time than car pool etc. Improvements we can do for them will carry over to others.

Needs for this customer segment?

Spending good amount of time atleast 1hr every day. Key goals - Want to get keep in touch with folks, entertained or informed. These are not fully mutually exclusive.

a/ Keep in touch with friends, family

b/ Catch up on shows, short videos etc

c/ Informed: Listen to podcasts, learn about stuff

d/ Complete chores: Pay bills etc.

Whats the most done activity? I think its entertainment and informed. In public transport, you dont have privacy (so cant do too much friend/ family connect). Its chaotic/noisy - so only can do passive listening stuff such as watching videos, songs, podcasts, news. Anything which requires focused doing, will not happen. And Chores - you will not have chores to complete everyday.

Lets focus on the use cases

1/ Gets news - video, audio, news feeds to read, podcasts

2/ Listen to music

3/ Watch videos

There are two types of actions here

1/ User can be active on the phone - going through different apps, going through options and constantly engaging. I think this is less natural in chaotic settings

2/ Users who are mostly passive - just listening or seeing something without having to interact too much.

So the key activities which are most conducive seem to be audio based - listening to news, podcasts, music etc. Will focus on this use case.

Now customers already do this - through spotify etc. How can we get users to switch to facebook for doing this?

Music, podcasts, audio based news service

Music: Most impactful. Most people listen to it. Tough competition. Execution risk is M-H: Needs licencsing.

Podcasts: Less audience. Fragmented competition. Lot of content Doenst need much licensing.

News: Curated news service.

Will focus on Music. Even though competition is tough, and needs licensing, solving it will create greatest impact. Also with FB’s scale we should not shy away from taking on such problems.

Pain points for listening to music

1/ I have certain taste. Want to listen to that.

2/ Would like good recommendations - here fb has a huge advantage. Can recommend based on what friends and family are listening to.

3/ Want to have a set which reinforces routine

Service: Ad supported music. Users can upgrade if they pay.

Music page

a/ Whats trending

b/ Top things listened by friends and family

c/ Create playlist -- add songs to playlist

d/ Curated playlists -- commuter specials, genres.

Success metrics

# of songs played per day, per week

DAUs, WAUs of songs feature

Visitors to Songs landing page.

Vishal Shah · Answer 5 · 2021-03-13T21:52:45+0000

I=Interviewer, Me=candidate

Me:When we say improving FB for commuters, are we referring to any FB product or a specific FB product?

I=Any of your choice

Me: Great. And is there a specific type of commuter you have in mind?

I=No.

Me: Ok, do you have any specific goals or measure in mind that I should know about?

I=No really this is your story. Please take the lead.

Me: Great! I like this freedom. Thank you. As a Lead PM, what is helpful is thinking about our business goal or what's missing for the business because that helps us figure out our north star. Once, I have that it's been helpful to think of what specific customer type would most benefit from it becuase then I can focus where I need to empathize. That helps create solutions that we can then prioritize and measure. Can I take similar approach?

I: Yes, it's a great approach.

Me: Thanks. FB's mission is to bring the world together and create communities. It is through various means accomplished such as various product like Groups, NEwsfeed (their primary thing), Advertising, Commenting, Liking, Sharing, Events, etc. People who feel connected over FB then can be leveraged for moentization by CTR, Impressions, etc. So to support FB's goal, we need to be focused on additional user engagements and that's achieved for helping strengthen and broaden communities and connections.

In this case our users are commuters so that would be Professionals. Their day to day is 1)Wake up and get ready 2)Rush to catch the train or bus 3)Maybe sleep on the ride or interact with others if not too weird becuse they don't really get a cahnce to do much as much at work 4)Catch a train back and 5)have some time to meet friends

Their pain points maybe :

1)dont get much time to nnetwork at work due to so much work

2)It be great to have a buddy to ride with everyday (I have personally found that once and it was so awesome)

3)Be great to know if someone selling product on marketplace is actually on the same journey withh me everyday. Becomes easier to buy product and I can also trust the products more.

Let's focus on #1 and #3 since #2 sort of is tied to #1.

1a) Track using GPS to see who in my network and 2nd level network is riding the same journey consistently and prompt me of days they travel. (F5,C1,V4)

1b) Prompt me to message them. (F5,C1,V5)

1c) Tell me of events they might be going to that will help me easily communicate with them and build friendship/connection.(F5,C1,V5)

3a) If they or their friends are selling something on marketplace, prompt me who is selling what (either them or their friends so just down to 2nd level connection). (F5,C1,V3)

If I had to choose 1 out of the 4, then I would prioritize 1c since it's the only feature that goes beyond just tellign me whom I potentially know and ride the same journey everyday but gives me something tangible to help me build great connection. That connection building is a key for FB since then I and that person would converse mroe on FB, visit FB more, maybe explore more events together as a way to build our friendship stronger and all of this would increase user engagement.

All in all, I am choosing to improve commuter experience by helping make daily commute more enjoyable by means of helping people build more connections.

neeraj gather · Answer 6 · 2020-05-11T11:38:16+0000

First, we should analyze if it makes sense for Facebook to put efforts in this specific segment.
1. Does it help Facebook in improving overall engagement significantly?
2. Does it help Facebook in achieving some other bigger goal? Like using this engagement to drive traffic towards other channel or collecting this data to get insigts on user patters during comute.
3. Can Facebook offer something unique than the competitors in this segment? (Radio, TikTok, Audible, Business Emails and Todo lists)

User Categorization:
1. Business focussed commuters and Chill out commuters
2. Drivers and Non-Drivers

Business Focussed Users - They would rather spend their time on email and corporate communications, planning the day etc. than spending time on Facebook which is leisure activity driven engagement platform

Chill out Commuters - Drivers - They would not be able to read or view anything. So, their preference would be just audio. And we should rationalize this that would an audio of unorganized FB newsfeed would be as interseting as listening to music or an audio book. If not, then how would FB compete with Radio or Audible?

Chill out Commuters - Non-Drivers - They have two set of users - those who prefer to plug in earphones and isolate themselves from surroundings, and those who prefer to stay connected with the surroundings while chilling out on phone. So, audio may be a kind of friction in itself and we should analyze what percentage of users would like to plug in earphones to interact with FB Audio, Video features and what percentage would like to engage without audio. And for those users who are comfortable with isolating themselves from surroundings, we should analyze if Facebook really need to change something or it is good as it is.

If reading text is a pain in commute than watching or listing to the content, then Facebook should think about competing with Instagram and Tiktok, which is a bigger problem in itself and can not be limited to just commuters.

I would like to know if we should really answer these kind of questions in traditional style or we should first validate the use case and see if it makes sense or not. Please share your views.

Malavika Lakireddy · Answer 7 · 2020-03-29T13:38:37+0000

By improving facebook for commuters, I would like to understand what specific area of facebook is in focus to be improved

is it usage of facebook during commuting hours?

is it providing specific information about commute options like train timings, bus timings, booking uber/ lyft etc?

is it usage of facebook within a specific region/ geography where there are high no of office users

Personas

Lets look at the commuter personas

- Commuters could be white collar professionals going into business/ tech districts during peak office hours

- Commuters could also be blue collared professionals who would be commuting during off peak hours say very early or very late in the night

- Commuters could be college students commuting to school from home

- Commuters could be using trains/ buses and cab shares for commuting

- Commuters could spend upto 1-2 hrs each way on commuting to and from work place to home

I would like to consider the white collar professionals going into business/ tech districts during peak office hours

Report customer needs

As a white collar professional commuting, i would like to probably do the follow

a) Catch up on news to begin the day

b) Catch up on whats happening in my social circle

c) Plan my task list for the day

d) Read books/ indulge in hobbies/ listen to music

The key constraint is that while commuting, the data connection may be of poor quality with patchy services

And the customer is most likely accessing FB via a mobile device

Cut through prioritization

- Considering the above usecases, the usecase with max opportunity is news through FB. This usecase has wide applicability and rich content

The KPis for this usecase could be # of users who could adopt this feature

# of articles read

Time spent on feature

#no of clicks

future monetization - paid news package

DAU

MAU

List solutions

- Feature for curated news (this could be a top bar where the stories segment in the mobile app or on the RHTop corner of the page)

- This can be specially during the peak commuting hours and can possibly move to other parts of the page later

- The articles open within the facebook app

- This can be ad sponsored content

- The top stories can be curated based on content consumption habits( aka other news articles, posted content from walls, recommended from friends)

- the user can be asked to select the topics/ categories they are interested in

Evaluate options

- This can be an A/B test within certain geography of commuters say between NY/ NJ/ Connecticut

- This can be rolled out to 1% of users within this geography and tested to see what is the usage adoption etc

Considerations

- How much content to purchase? How to monetize it? Would we charge the user for premium articles? No charge, basic free news

- Fake news issue? Need to have the content curated from leading publications

- Bandwidth issues - Top 5 stores pre-loaded into app every day and then subsequent requests to be made over cellular network

- Videos vs Articles? Videos are very immersive, but considering the bandwidth issue, will not launch with videos in first phase

- Success criteria - if this increases time spent in app by 5%, and adoption of 2% atleast in the test group

- Summarizing we could improve Facebook for commuters by launching news with curated content and top 5 articles preloaded into the app for seamless experience during low bandwidht times.