Design a product for Facebook to fight COVID-19.

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Design a product for Facebook to fight COVID-19.

Asked at Meta (Facebook) over a year ago

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stashbag · Answer 1 · 2020-12-08T17:27:16+0000

Clarification / Goals

We are building a product to combat covid 19. Here I am assuming Combat Covid == helping actively fight the spread of the disease. We are not solving for absence of physical events / in-person meetups nor are we solving for mental health related issues, or economic issue due to the collateral damage by the virus
Strengths of Facebook are its massive social graph, easily accessible and engaged user base (2 billion+ people), and presence of existing communities on the app
For this product we are going to focus on leveraging FB’s strengths to combat COVID. We are going to start with building this product in the US
Scope is limited to Facebook.com . We are not focusing on Instagram, Whatsapp or other Facebook owned properties
From the FB perspective are goal is to increase user engagement of our features; there is no immediate focus on monetization

User Personas

Facebook users: Largest segment. Can be sliced and diced on demographic (age, gender, location) and product usage (heavy, medium, low). For now we are going to bucket them into one segment/
- Jobs to be done
  - 1) Want to learn about COVID, Get emerging information that is accurate / factual
  - 2) Want to share information about COVID with network
  - 3) Want to keep friends and family safe
Healthcare professionals: Doctors, Nurses, Testing centers
- Jobs to be done
  - 1) Share pertinent information to with their patients
  - 2) Want to messages about their local regions / medical facilities capacity
Govt. Agencies: Policy / Decision makers at the Federal, State and local level
- Jobs to be done
  - 1) Want to know about the state of COVID in their state or country,
  - 2) Want to disseminate information to the public on current protocols and evolving situation
Businesses / Restaurants: Those who want to relay information about their business and messaging around safety requirements and protocols
- Jobs to be done
  - 1) Want to share information on their COVID policies and security protocols
  - 2) Want to continue to running their business as per COVID standards

Based on the above segments, I am going to focus on FB users (the board segment comprising majority of the users). The main reason for doing so is that the other segments’ Jobs to be done are solved through the current Facebook app and they have other channels to reach their current goals (though by focusing on them we could, potentially, help accelerate that process.

User Needs

1) Accessing the right information
- Accessing information which is evolving and changing. Being able to see it in my news feed seamlessly.
2) Keeping out Misinformation
- Keep out fake news on COVID. Minimizing or avoiding misinformation and not sharing such information with users / my network
3) Contact tracing
- Support in helping me easily reach out to folks whom I have been in contact me incase I test positive OR
- Support for others who test positive to reach out to me to get tested / Quarantine to avoid further exposure.
4) Sharing experiences with COVID
- Sharing you COVID experiences and stories with others to spread the work on recovery, avoidance, examples of risky behavior and so on

Prioritization

Access to right information on COVID: (R:10, I:2, C:1, E:2 —> 20) Potential to reach the most number of users.
Minimize Misinformation (R:8, I:3, C:2, E:3 —> 16) —> Lower reach as not everyone is going to see misinformation but high impact on the users
Contact tracing (R:7, I:3, C:3, E:3) —> 15
Sharing experiences: (R:6, I:2, C:2, E:2) —> 12
Based on the prioritization I would focus on building the following as I believe they have the highest impact in combating COVID
1. Misinformation: There is a lot of noise and misinformation on covid. We need to combat that effectively so that users have the right information and follow professionals recommendations rather than uninformed or questionable claims that dont comply with science
2. Contract tracing: This feature will help proactively stem the growth of COVID by facilitating quarantine to people who might have been exposed to COVID positive users.

I am not going to focus on information access or sharing COVID experiences as the current app does have avenues to achieve this via Groups, Posts, Newsfeed.

Solutions

Misinformation: We need to proactively flag posts that are false or misleading. Doing so for everything might be challenging so we should limit it for posts that meet a certain threshold of sharing / virality (exact threshold tbd)
Options
- Use ML / NLP
  - Take existing published articles from reputable sources (science, public agencies, research papers) and use them as the our training set to build a neural network that uses supervised learning. Run sentiment analysis on each of these articles using NLP and determine the types of words or context of sentences. Train this network using a mix of genuine and fake articles. All articles that go against established facts, flag the post as misleading. This approach gives can do checking at massive scale
- Use Human Moderators
  - For all posts that meets a certain threshold have users flag them as misinformation / report them as misinformation. Alternatively setup a team of in-house folks to help with this curation as well. We can crowdsource information
- Use ML + Human moderators
  - We can combine this with Human moderators to determine which posts to flag and which to review
  - The ones we flag should be reviewed by a human and then marked as disputed. Further sharing of such posts should be prevented.
  - For existing shares, all the posts should have a misinformation sticker or some sort of user warning
Challenges
- Large hairy problem, Chance of false positives, limited training data, human moderators might be $$, time taken to build and train neural net
- Perception issues of FB being arbiter of information rather than being a neutral platform, Concerns about free speech controls
Contact tracing: We want to give users to notify other users they have come in contact one with a +ve COVID test or get notified.
Options
- Location. If we have location history of the folks then we can use it to map that along with their friends who have been near them during that time
- Facebook events. If people went to any Facebook events and anyone at those events w we can use that events page or message people who attended that event about
- Based on user interactions: Users can specific whom they met with and we can proactively notify them or create a contact tracing group or support mass 1:1 messaging
- Once we have been able to notify all the people of the potential tracking we can also share some information on what type of exposed they should have gotten
Challenges
- People might be reluctant to share information about their diagnosis
- People might be reluctant to tag others whom they have exposed. One way to overcome that is to create private groups / 1-1 messages that support one on one communication

Metrics

To track success

Engagement on contact tracking apps:
- +ve users reaching out to their contacts for testing / quarantining guidance
- W-o-W growth in DAUs
Number of articles flagged as disinformation correctly
- Drop misinformation articles going viral (before / after)

Summary

_To summarize, I would build a contract tracing feature that enables people to notify they connections of potential exposure. I believe it will help potentially reduce spread and those who have been exposed can quarantine and possibly prevent from infecting others

PM Team · Answer 2 · 2020-07-25T20:35:20+0000

I spent a lot of time writing out an answer, but once I got to my solutions I stopped. If I were in the interview I might just admit that I picked a problem that was too difficult to solve – changing people’s minds. In addition, all of my solutions are already being implemented through a variety of channels. Would being honest with the interview that you dug yourself into a hole, be an acceptable answer? Can we back track?

May bad answer:

Clarify: FB's mission is to bring the world closer together. With the current pandemic forcing us to stay away from friends and family, it is more important than ever to give people the opportunity to feel connected. FB has already provided the world with lots of tools to stay connected, so I would like to consider what else FB could contribute to the fight against Covid-19. FB has a massive network, the ability to share information quickly and a platform designed to share stories that can shape behavior. The network could be used to assist in contract tracing, sharing of factual information and to influence people to physically distance and wear masks. All of these goals are important, I think the goal to encourage physical distancing and wear masks could have the greatest impact at in the US at this moment. Would it be ok to make that the goal of this initiative?

(Assume Yes)

Great. With the goal to increase the number of people practicing physical distancing and wearing masks in mind, I'll proceed. Please give me a few minutes to think about how I would tackle this problem.

Structure:

I'll start by thinking about the various users and once I've decided which group to focus on, I'll think of some reasons these users may not be practicing Covid safe behaviors now. Once I've identified the biggest pain point I'll brainstorm some solutions before evaluating the most effective and creating a go-to-market strategy. Does that sound good?

Users:

Hyper Vigilant Covid Avoider – these people are doing everything possible to protect themselves and their loved ones. Think of a cancer patient who can’t risk anything.
Responsible Citizen – These people understand the importance of safe practices, but may slip up occasionally.
Possible Disease Spreader – Think of a person who doesn’t even own a mask. They went out to a bar with a group of friends as soon as the bars were open. They spent the lockdown socializing as much as possible.

I’m going to target the possible disease spreader b/c changing their behavior will make the biggest impact.

Pain Points:

I actually think the pain points for social distancing and wearing masks could be unique to each activity. I’ll quickly go through both before prioritizing.I'm also separting the pain points into physical and emotional categories.

Pain Points for Masks:

Physical

Buying
Comfort
Mask Slippage

Emotional

Not Believing it is necessary or effective
Remembering it
Embarrassed
Social distancing

Pain Points for social distancing:

Physical:

Constraints due to living or working conditions
Requiring care or assistance
Essential services – grocery shopping

Emotional:

Missing human touch and interaction
Fear of missing out when others aren’t social distancing
Need for connection – feeling lonely
Not believing in social distancing practices

When looking at these lists of needs there are some I don’t want to address because they aren’t central to FB’s mission. I think I will quickly eliminate ones around purchasing masks, uncomfortable masks and close contact due to living and working conditions. While an app could help address some of these needs, I really feel like FB’s strengths would be best for the more emotional side of the pain points. I could be missing out on something amazing like an app that informs the user if they are within a danger zone of another person or informs users of temporary housing; I think FB can make the biggest impact by addressing some of the emotional needs. Since believing in the importance of each practice is a common pain point I’d like to focus on addressing that pain point for my MVP and consider the others for additional features post launch.

Solutions:

To address the issue of not believing in the importance or effectiveness of wearing masks I have 3 possible solutions:

Celebrity Awareness Campaign – a mix of Hollywood, Athletes, Business Leaders and Health Care professionals

Fact Checks

Posting factual stories – compare areas with mask policies to those without and show infection rates and death rates

Dave McManus · Answer 3 · 2020-07-13T01:16:52+0000

1. Clarify the scope of the question

Would this be a web product or a stand-alone app? Recommend existing platform.

What does fight actually mean? Stop the spread and encourage correct education?

FB’s Mission:

2. List the user groups and chose the one you’re focusing on

Users who could potentially be infected by COVID 19

Health authorities that need to get their messages out there

Small businesses who are struggling during COVID 19 and about to go out of business.

Advertisers who are advertising during COVID 19.

I believe focusing on users who could potentially be infected by COVID 19 is the most important to focus on. Do you agree?

3. List the user needs for your user group

Users need access to up to date information on cases and spread (impact: 90,

Users need best practice tips from health organizations to stop the spread (impact: 90)

Users need to know where they get tested - closest. (impact:90)

Users need support from other users especially in social isolation

Users need encouragement by others to reinforce positive behaviors

Users need to know how they can support their local businesses and communities

4. Prioritize the user needs

Based on the user group we’ll be targeting it makes most sense to focus on: 1, 2, 3. Reason being they all address the stop of the spread and help to increase the well being of our core user community.

5. List your solutions

#1 Boosting posts from credible healthcare information sources (CDC, WHO) into people's news feeds, so they receive timely and consistent updates. (R: 100, I: 80, C: 100 E: 0)
#2 Increasing the visibility of people sharing content that is correct from the above sources. This ‘socially shared media’ will have a greater impact through the social graph. (R: ?, I: 100, C:100, E: 80
#3 For hotspot areas of virus outbreak, we could alert users on the Facebook APP via receive push notifications for important notifications from health / government authorities, like stay indoors and limit social interactions to 5 people. (R: ?, I: 60, C: 80, E: 85)
#4 Offer easy access to users who think they might be impacted by the coronavirus. Using NLP and AI I would search for anyone mentioned what are COVID symptoms? And then present the correct information of 1. What the symptoms are and 2. Their next steps - book a call with a local doctor or get tested from these locations. (R:?, I: 100, C: 100, E: 70)

6. Evaluate your solutions and choose one (reach, impact, confidence, effort and cost)

Based on the prioritization I believe 1, 2 are definitely easy choices to implement. They solve the problem of misinformation and are quick wins in terms of development time.
4 I believe will be harder to implement, however could have a much bigger impact on slowing the spread of the disease by pushing people to get tested if they are reporting specific symptoms.

7. Paint a picture of how you’ll build your product

#1:

Make a list of all the credible health organizations (i,e WHO, CDC) with accounts on our platform.
Message them all individually and provide a $XX free budget for advertising.
Allow them to boost their advertising of free messages across the platform to help spread the correct information.
Provide higher organic reach to their posts.

#2:

Understanding the list of links (and creating a whitelist) that could be shared - that promotes the correct information from our health partners
Understand the keywords that might be negative within these posts (i.e Fake news, incorrect, wrong)
Develop an AI scoring model to understand which posts are negative vs positive (and generally trying to spread the right message)
Define how the algorithm will prioritize this content. What weighting will these posts receive vs general posts?
Users will see the posts like they normally would with any other post.

8. Summarize your answer

In order to help our users understand and protect themselves from COVID 19, we need to provide better tools and communication to help them understand the risks and the preventative actions they can take to protect themselves and their families from the disease. We believe boosting messages from trusted health authorities, and boosting the effects of social sharing on these pieces of content - we can make a positive impact.

Parama Dutta · Answer 4 · 2020-03-28T18:38:14+0000

F/B mission: Connect users to build a community and make meaningful connections. Share authentic and trusted information. COVID-19 F/B product should be such that users impacted w/ COVID-19 can have reliable source of information and gain value from the product on pain points or needs not addressed.

Goals: User adoption + User engagement => User Retention

User:

COVID-19 patients
Healthworkers
Gov agencies
Family and Friends

User Needs

COVID-19 patients
- Non confirmed Patients: Users who suspect they have COVID-19, have some symptoms and want to confirm the same. Looking for authentic information on what next steps to follow to get tested.
- Confirmed Patients: Tested positive and now are seeking next steps to what measures to take
Healthworkers - Doctors, nurses, health workers etc
- Lack supplies in hostiplace or care center
- Have to work long hours- Mostly above 30 and have families
- Mental health - heavily stressed and depressed and have anxiety
- Need to communicate w/ other hospitals and health care center to get material or equipment
Gov agencies - county head, police etc
- Want to send alerts or broadcast messages to the community
- Want to trace contact and track COVID-19 people
- Want to enforce social distinating and other measures recommended
- Provide a support channel for community people to ask questions and concerns they may have in such crisis situation
Family and Friends and all users
- Source of true and dependable information related to COVID-19
- Information on how to care for affected family / friends

Solutions

Information Portal: Page or information tab that curates and shares all authentic information related to COVID-19 in facebook. Users when they log on to facebook can come to this tab / page to get true information in one place.COVID-19 patients can get information on how to get tested or what measure to take if tested positive
Agency community account / for each neighbourhood: Neighborhood map based app where users can connect directly to agencies in the community to connect and contact and reach out to them with concerns. COVID-19 patients or family and friends can share information on if they are tested? Where are they located?
Contact tracing app - Map based interface which traces COVID-19 patients movement in the community. So that other people in the neighbourhood are informed about COVID-19 patients. The personal information of the users are not identified in this product. This will help decrease the spread of COVID-19 as users are more informed about affected people and non affected people in their community
Online counselling app: Online app for health workers to get professional help in form of counselling

Prioritization

Solution	Users Addressed	Impact (business goal and users)	Effort (ease to build)	Innovation
Information Portal	Family/ friends/ all users COVID-19 Patients	Medium	Medium	Medium
Agency community account / for each neighbourhood	Gov agencies - county head, police	High	High	Medium
Contact tracing app	All Users	High	High	High
Online counselling app	Healthworkers	High	High	Medium

Recommendation : Based on above prororitzation factors I will want to build contact tracing app. As it will have the most impact across all users, business goals set and is highly innovatove (novel) solution.

kuma0177 · Answer 5 · 2020-03-28T08:26:36+0000

Here are some assumptions that will helpy ou answer this product design question:

Part of core FB product
Mobile, WWW

Goal:

To improve information discovery, reduce misinformation, and encourage safe practices while forming stronger support communities.

Key user segments associated with covid-19 pandemic are:

Doctors/Healthcare workers
Patients
Caretakers/Family/Friends

For the purpose of this interview, I want to focus on the doctor/healthcare persona because the volume of this persona is smaller thus it is easier to understand their pain points. And during these times most regular users will look to them to fight misinformation.

Defining details of these personas, these are doctors, nurses, caretakers and other staff bringing patients to hospital and managing the healthcare lifecycle. Living in major cities where the COVID has the biggest impact, such as the Bay area, NYC. Also, these personas are well connected to technology. They are usually 30 or above, often have families, work long hours, see a lot of stressful situations in the hospitals.

Problems Faced By Health workers:

Providing education or counseling to false-positive cases
Examining patients by being close to them and the potential effects of contamination
Lack of enough human resources to examine patients
Risk of mental illnesses and depression
Physically incapable of monitoring and taking care of patients

Among the above problems:

2 and 5 seem to impact on the resourcing aspect. It is hard to solve the physical assistance problem without getting additional humans or robots and it is hard to deliver on that in a very short time frame, especially since it has implications on the lives of patients.
Based on the news I have read, the mental health of health care workers is a key problem as well. I would like to solve this problem for health care workers.

Below are some potential solutions:

VR mental support rooms for healthcare workers in hospitals
1. Workers can relax and experience calm environments in a VR room. Meditate, converse in VR with the community and family to get mental support.
Gratitude Gifts & FB Covid Brave Badges
1. For verified workers (by emails), add a special badge to show the service of the person and give them recognition in the community.
2. Collective love and support from their family, friends, and most importantly local community members. Consisting of a collection of hand-curated stories and gifts delivered by FB to their homes.
FB Pro Counselling
1. Offer an online conferencing solution where FB members can offer pro bono counseling services from verified therapists to health workers free of cost. It can be integrated with the help of messenger and live stream in FB and WhatsApp.

Prioritization - I will use engineering cost and impact on user experience (volume of users, impact on FB mission) as means to evaluate the effort and come up with an ROI score that measures impact in UX per engineering effort put in.

Of all of the solutions, I will choose #3 since it solves the key issues of mental health by providing quality mental health and also further’s FB mission of bringing the world closer together. In terms of the other two prioritization dimensions of engineering cost and impact on UX, I believe that 1, 2, 3 are kind of similar in terms of engineering effort, but in terms of impact on user experience, it is in the order by #3, #2, and #1.

Proposed user journey:

FB will reach out to verified counselors across the world to verify their job title and degrees based on their emails and work addresses. FB can leverage FB pages for trusted therapists to find qualified therapists.
Build a profile for such therapists to indicate the language, area of focus, country of origin etc.
FB will reach out to hospitals and provide a one time password for health workers to sign up for the counseling program.
Health workers will optin to the counseling via the URL provided. They will specify the kind of trouble they are having.
FB will match the workers with counselors based on their schedule.
Will send out calendar invites and notification via app/email to confirm and remind them of the session
During the session it will be activated via the URL provided in the invite and will it will open a video chat or audio chat through whatsapp or messenger as preferred by both parties.
Parties will communicate during this time. The counselor will take notes and send supportive messages to encourage positivity and also setup follow up session.

Success Metric To measure the impact:

# of health workers and # of counselors that sign up for it
DAU and WAU count of health workers using this service
DAU and WAU of counselors who signed up for this

Chenhan(Steven) Wang · Answer 6 · 2022-01-21T18:36:49+0000

Clarification questions

What are the problems are we trying to solve here?

Define the current problem -

Contact tracing
Informing anyone about getting Covid so they can get tested
Getting vaccines
Influencing followers/stopping the spreading of misinformation

b.Does the goal align with what you have in mind

c.Is this mobile/web/both platform? You decide

d.Are we building only for NA because different countries have different regulations? Just the NA for now

Facebook’s mission

to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected

Goal - to design a product to help people share information on contracting Covid, where to get tested, vaccinated and benefits of getting vaccinated to prevent the further spread of Covid19.

2. Identify user groups

Potential user groups

Healthcare workers
General public
Vaccine administrators
Government regulators/health system

Is there a specific user group you want me to focus on?

I would like to focus on the general public who are the majority users of facebook as they will have the biggest impact.

3. Identify pain points of General Public

Segment - people traveling, people living with families, people living in care homes

Will focus on people living with families

Don't know if I have contacted Covid
- Isolated, depressed, in quarantine if covid positive
Don’t know where I got it from
Don't recall who I was in contact with in the last 2 weeks
Confused about what to do next or where to go
When am I eligible for vaccines
Don’t know where to get vaccinated
Not sure if I want to get vaccinated or the benefits of being vaccinated
Scared if i will contract it from a any source

Value prop

Facebook has over 2B users

Tons of resources - healthcare worker, groups, influencers and information sources

4. Solutions

Don't know if I have contacted Covid
1. Isolated, depressed, in quarantine if covid positive

Facebook can surface prompts on a users timeline on latest covid19 symptoms as provided by healthcare bodies

Creating VR content for people quarantining alone to keep them entertained, motivated and active

Don’t know where I got it from

Facebook can create a section of Covid maps where the infection is prevalent for users to identify whether they visited any of those areas

Facebook can ask its users to click on a button if they are positive and provide information on locations they visited in the last two weeks. Or facebook can auto generate the locations a user visited in the last two weeks for the user to validate against the covid map.

Don't recall who I was in contact with in the last 2 weeks

If someone tests positive, they can let their network know through facebook so that anyone who has been in contact with that person can also go and get tested

Confused about what to do next or where to go

If someone clicks on tested positive, facebook can provide a list of resources on what to do next and where to go depending on small health check questionnaire that facebook can ask and guide its users on next steps

When am I eligible for vaccines

Based on country’s regulations, facebook has information on users age and based on age group eligibility, facebook can prompt its users on when they will be eligible for a vaccine and which dose

They can collect that information from users on whether they have received the dose expected or not and advise when the next one could be available

Don’t know where to get vaccinated

Facebook can provide a list of all local pharmacies administering vaccines by age group

Not sure if I want to get vaccinated or the benefits of being vaccinated

Facebook could ask some questions or predict based on users engagement history whether they are people who may not be sure whether to get vaccinated or not and share some ads on benefits of vaccination and stories on people who have lost lives due to lack of vaccines as well as stories of those that were saved due to vaccines

Scared if i will contract it from a any source

If more and more FB users starte to identify as covid +, through AI, it could alert its users on potential of contracting covid based on all data collected

Prioritization

KPIs

Usage/Engagement

Number of users clicking on tested positive - North Star Metric
Clicking on resources provided by FB
Number of users reading covid19 symptoms
Accuracy of the algorithm suggesting potential users where covid could have been contracted from
How many people are watching covid 19 stories
How many people are booking a vaccine appointment after watching those stories

Counter metric

% of active users not using tested positive feature

niths · Answer 7 · 2021-05-13T21:05:44+0000

1. Clarify the scope of the question

Me:-Would this be a web product or a stand-alone app?

Interviewer:- For now we will integrate it with existing product.

Me:- Are you targeting any specific demographic locations like the country that has higher % of COVID-19 affected ?

Interviewer:- Ya for know lets keep it as India.

Me:- Did you guys took any recent survey for Covid-19 as you guys took in past when natural calamities took place ?

Interviewer:- Ya we recently did a Covid-19 survey and collected some basic information.

Me:-Can you list me the questions that you guys asked during the survey?

Interviewer:- Are you safe from Covid-19 ?

Is anyone close to you affected from Covid-19 ?

If they are not affected we will tell them to follow the rules and be in quarantine and if they were affected from Covid-19 we will tell them to fill a survey - their age group, the symptoms they had and how they fought and other bodily ailments (e.g.- diabetes, BP) they had during COVID-19 and lastly If they are vaccinated or not.

FB’s Mission:

FB’s mission is to give people tools to build communities and help people to stay connected and discover what’s happening in the world.

2. List the user groups and chose the one you’re focusing on

Children -(3 to 17)

Teenage-(18-30)

Working group -(31 to 49)

Old age(50 -85)

I am choosing Old age user group as they are in more of danger position compared to other User groups, and they have other bodily ailments which make them to be more vulnerable.

3. User Persona

Old age(50 -85), As we had selected a particular user group we will have a user persona for this category

Natasha

age-56, female

Retired economics professor in XX university.

Like to be updated with the latest world news.

4. List the user needs for your user group/User pain points

For pain points we need to consider the Natasha whole user journey.

Natasha is worried that is there any special procedures to be followed particularly for old age people with other bodily ailments?

She doesn't know which news related to COVID-19 is fake?

She doesn't know which vaccine to put, and also she needs to know fully about the vaccine after effects.

Likewise, she wants to know which hospitals near her are putting the vaccine, total slots for the day and fees for different vaccine per hospital.

She also wants to know the highly infected areas near her.

She also wants to donate to Covid-19 relief fund, and she doesn't know which is certified

5. Prioritize the user needs

Based on the user group we’ll be targeting it makes most sense to focus on: 1, 2, 3,6. Reason being they are essential which in turn can reduce the spread and educate the people much about Covid-19 and 4, 5 points are not of top focus as of now.

6. List your solutions

Before using our product we will tell them to update the details in the given form and in turn form will collect information such as name and also age group based on the age we will redirect them to group chat as well as personal chatbot will be opened

#1. Natasha will be provided a full pdf of what needs to be followed for old age group with ailments or without ailments, perfect information for people in each category will be provided in detail (E.G- home remedy's, doctor prescribed medicines). If they have further doubts they can clarify it in a group chat or send request in chatbot to have one to one communication with any Covid-19 recovered patients.
#2 Personal Bot or the group chat will always be updated with the latest verified news related to Covid-19 or protocols to be followed or vaccine related latest information and same information will also be available in personal bot as the user won't miss the latest news.
#3 For Vaccine related news like which vaccine is good and what are the after effects of each vaccine will be sent to each user and also posted in group and also user's rating for the most used vaccine will also be provided.
#4 We will give them the information of which hospitals are putting the vaccine and the information regarding which vaccine they are using, the cost, the distance between their location and hospital and if anyone from their contacts already vaccinated there that will also be displayed as well as total slots for a day and timings for vaccination and also clear steps to be followed will be sent to them personally after vaccination.
#5 We will also show them what are the highly infected area's near them with precise distance using maps and Ml.
#6. We will provide an option "help Covid-19 people" which in turns shows two options pay for relief fund, or we will provide them some verified contact of NGO's, so they can do help in any means.

7. Evaluate your solutions and choose one (reach, impact, confidence, effort and cost)

Based on the prioritization I believe 1, 2 3 and 6 are definitely easy choices to implement. They solve the problem of misinformation and are quick wins in terms of development time and also people of all age groups will be educated on what to follow and what to not and also will in turn provide relief to affected people in whatever means we can.
4 and 5 I believe will be harder to implement, however could have a much bigger impact on slowing the spread of the disease.

8. Paint a picture of how you’ll build your product

1. The first Page will be a form which the user needs to fill to move to the next page.

2. Then after filling he will be redirected to group chat and also personal chatbot will be opened

3. The group chat as well as the personal chatbot will provide you the latest news and also what to be followed for each age group specific.

4. Then button will be provided as "help for Covid-19 people" for collecting reliefs in any forms and sending to the affected people or their families who are in need of it.

These are core changes to be implemented in MVP

As for pain points 4 and 5 need to discuss with engineer and design team to get to know about the higher chance of implementing these ideas in real time with new technologies. If possible will do to these changes and release it as version 2.

9. Summarize your answer

In order to help our users understand and protect themselves from COVID-19, we need to provide better tools and communication to help them understand the risks and the preventative actions they can take to protect themselves and their families from the disease. We believe boosting messages from trusted health authorities, and known contacts boosting the effects of social sharing on these pieces of content - we can make a positive impact.

Bijan This is my first analysis kindly let me know the feedback.

rahul_g · Answer 8 · 2021-04-26T04:39:40+0000

Clarify

When you say fight covid-19, Im assuming the goal is to reduce the spread/minimise loss of human life
Is it an app or site? can be either
Is it in a particular country? Considering its a worldwide Issue right now Ill stick to world wide scope
Facebook advantage: Reach - facebook has incrible reach

Who are the possible customers

healthcare workers
patients
Common public
- Govt is a stakeholder here since common public is possibly the population of a country

I want to focus on common public since healthcare workers and patients have limited scope since most of their problems are infra problems.

additionally In my view the biggest risk from covid is it's spread rate, while fatality rate is still lower (there are more deadly diseases, covid survival rates are good if patient receives appropriate health care in time)

so I want to focus on the common healthy public with the goal of minising covid spread

What are the needs of the common man

Prevent themselves from catching covid: tips, do/don'ts, Keep an eye out - Know when to approach doctors (which symptoms)
1. Know when they've come in contact/been exposed so they can proactively keep an eye out
2. Lets friends/family know they're are risk (Some people may feel ashamed ot do so)
Hospital list: Treatment where to go for treatment/numbers to call in case they test positive and need treatment
Early care: What to do if you're showing symptoms
how to get tested :
Arranging plasma donors

- I want to focus on 1 and 2 since they are extremely high impact items in terms of scope of impact and/or reach

- Early care is a bit tricky and subjective, don't think app is suited to diagnose patients, would be happier redirecting patients to set of remote medicines apps so they can consult a doctor

- How to get tested - again can be a list of companies helping with testing or helpline number, google search can easily solve it.

What will i build

Need	Impact summary	Call
covid prevention guidelines - do, don'ts, symptoms to watch out for will cover things such as - how long to wash hands, how to wear mask properly, social distancing	RICE: H,M,H,L	Pick - easy win, high ROI and a must have given the virulent nature of the disease
Contact tracing /Mark yourself positive: allow to mark yourself as positive (with proof of test from recognised lab) so people around you can take preventive action Facebook can leverage it's reach here to contact trace using android or ios bluetooth protocol	RICE: M,VH,H,H	Pick - Must have to ensure timely treament/ensure people dont spread the virus during it's asymptomatic phase
How to test: Arrange for covid test at home	RICE: M,H,M,VH	Don't pick - Not an area of strength for facebook and this problem is already sovled by google. Payment + tracking of test etc = best done by govt/authorise med facilities Can list publically availabile resources here
How to treat symptoms:	RICE: M,M,VL,M	Don't pick - area of risk, the treatment is best managed by doctors. We can link to tele medicine apps
Link to hospitals equipped to treat covid	RICE: L,VH,H,L	Pick - while overall fatality rates are low those who need treatment need to go hospitals with specialised equipment + availability
arranging plasma donor for patients	RICE: L,VH,H,L	Pick - it's an area of strength for FB (network) , it can be leveraged to identify potential donors nearby who have covid antibodies
Risk call out to user: tell the user they are in a risk area (basis population density of users around) and ask them to maintain adequate measure Proactively show the hot spots to the user/warn them on entry	RICE: H,H,H,M	Pick: Actively help prevent infections

Metrics Ill be tracking

Product Mission

- Covid rate and R0 among users vs national rate, goal is that these numbers should be lower

Product health metris

- Adoption rate

- Usage rate

- incremental engagement for FB via the app (app opens and time spent)

PhiloDeWhit · Answer 9 · 2020-07-24T00:39:23+0000

Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.

The Coronavirus pandemic has taken the world by surprise, it's ended up restricting people's movement in the physical world - causing them to use online tools like video to communicate with friends and co-workers. Covid 19 is causing the world to accelerate having private social conversations online and this ties in well both to Facebooks's mission of connecting the world as well as FB's strategy as outlined by Mark at F8 in 2019.

FB has a real opportunity here to be a reliable and trusted platform for users to connect with friends and family to have private supportive conversations.

I have a few clarifying questions that I would like to go over with you:

Do we want this to be part of the Facebook App or a standalone experience
Should this be a global launch or focus on the US
Do we want to support this across all platforms.

Interviewer: It should be part of the Facebook app, and we should be able to fast follow on a global launch.

Thank you for the clarifications. We will focus on a WWW mobile launch.

Can you give me a few minutes to collect my thoughts on the user segments.

Ok, I have given this some thought, and these are the main user segments:

Covid 19 patients: Patients who have undergone testing/ or a presumed to have covid and are quarantining at home.
Family/Friends: Support network for covid 19 patients
Doctors and Medical Staff:
Government agencies: City and National agencies disseminating information for folks to peruse.

For the purpose of this discussion I would like to focus on #1. This is a targeted group of folks right now dealing with a very new and evolving disease. Its part of our responsibility to help ensure that we provide trusted information as well as support tools to these users.

For Government Agencies we could provide them with access to tools to collaborate in real time faster, and also some amount of free ad budget to help with knowledge dissemination but that’s an operation problem.

For Doctors and Nurses the important part is disseminating reliable information, as well as improving medical triage times. Given there might be some HIPAA regulations I don’t want to focus on this now.

Family and Friends will benefit from the tools we build for the Covid 19 patients.

The top pain points for the Covid 19 patients are as follows:

Lack of access of high quality information on Covid 19
Lack of Support community groups for existing / recovering Covid-19 patients.
Access to volunteer groups in case the covid 19 patient needs help
Access to supplies to help keep their families healthy.

For the purpose of this discussion I would like to focus on #1 as this is where I think Facebook can make the most impact as well as put its operation muscle to good use. #2 and #3 are important as well but Facebook's existing messaging and group platforms offer the capabilities for users to self organize.

The vision for the covid 19 product that we build will be providing users with the most reliable up-to-date information on Covid 19

I would like to take a few minutes to brainstorm. Here are some of the things that Facebook can do:

Brainstorm:

Data we want to show users that are important:

Partner with the key national and global health organizations to curate key Covid 19 facts and disseminate via the newsfeed.
1. Have some sort of visual indicator that the information is from a trusted source.
Ensure that the newsfeed content is reliable
1. Investing in Fact checking contractor budget to ensure that the team is being diligent and through.
Publish with leading research organizations to provide an overview on the race towards a vaccine.
Provide a local and national view of Covid 19 proliferation
Prevention tips and tricks

Ways of representing the information:

Have a standalone tab for Covid 19 information within the Facebook app.
Integrate covid 19 information into the newsfeed triggered by a key word search
Have Covid19 information tab bubble to the top of the feed based on historical searches.

My preference is that we go ahead an have a standalone tab at the start and then eventually as we have click data use a smarter algorithm on when to surface the information.

To summarize - In order to help fight Covid 19 FB will build a Covid Information Tab within the FB app that will launch worldwide. We are building this for existing Covid 19 patients as well as folks who think they might have Covid 19 so that they can access high quality information during this pandemic.

Some key metrics that we would look at are:

Engagement rate of the new Covid Information Tab
Dwell time on the Tab
Abandonment rate per sub-section (it will tell us some of the areas that users are not interested in)
Discussion rate on articles - measured by unique comments and replies
User sentiment - measured by reactions to the articles.

Some pitfalls:

High volume of fake information with users cross post fake reference material in the content. This can be taken care of with an AI approach on vetting videos on post / cross check with a known blacklist of fake news links.

Kishore Ramaiah · Answer 10 · 2020-07-19T22:30:36+0000

GOAL: What is the product goal? Is it to enhance acquisition/activation, awareness, engagement, retention or to create social awareness (even if it is, there would be a business goal behind).

Lets assume engagement/awareness is the key goal during these pandemic times and help reduce covid 19 incidences and increase awareness.

User Segmentation :

Age: Kids ( <15 years), College students (17- 25), Professional (26-50), Old age (50+)

Old age people are more susceptible to covid per research and hence i will select this user segment to make an impact

Pain points:

They do not login/open the app often on their cellphone.
They probably do not navigate the screens/UI with ease. Example cannot find the groups/pages,
Difficulty in getting essentials groceries/food etc

Solutions:

Ask to provide notifications frequently on covid status frequently .(2 times per day). Only send important updates in the region/location indicating if positive covid cases are found in 1 or 2 mile radius.
Ask to subscribe to covid awareness group in login screen and encourage to watch informative and positive news/medical news on it.
Offer to help through notifications - help with shopping - food/groceries etc.

Pros- Cons:

Solution 1: if the person is using a key based old phone and app is not installed ,this may not work. If it is smart phone, and app is not installed yet, FB may send an email or text too the phone indicating these new features.

Impact is high ( as more sign ups are possible)

Solution 2: Easy to implement and impact is high

Solution 3: Need to integrate delivery apps or feature into FB. Or collaborate with partners during these times. Engineering cost associated and high impact.

Metrics to measure:

No of new sign ups every day (through email for text)
No of videos watched /per day.
No of orders/day by a user. No of transactions/day

I would prioritize solution 2 and solution 1 and then solution 3 wrt implementation

Michael Vakoc · Answer 11 · 2020-04-03T22:09:39+0000

Assumptions

Built into the main Facebook app
Need to launch quickly as development time is limited and COVID-19 is already severly restricting the lives of Fb’s users

Goal

Goal and mission
1. Fb’s mission is to give people tools to build communities and help people to stay connected and discover what’s happening in the world.
2. Mission of the product I build will be focused on giving people the right tools to build communities and stay connected during the time of social distancing caused by widespread of COVID-19.
3. Metric to track would be number of daily active users. Selecting this metric because it will tell us if the product is useful to people (if loads use it, it is probably good)
Non-goal: I am not focusing on enabling users to discover latest informaiton about COVID-19. Google, Bing and others already provide very good and up to date information regarding the virus. If I was at Facebook I would focus on what Fb does the best -> connecting people.

Users

Public

Health care workers
Government
Private companies

I will focus on the public because that’s the largest sector and majority of Fb’s users. Further break down the Public into three categories by risk of getting the disease as well as the limitations implied on them:

People with symptoms
People living in regions with high number of cases or serious social distancing restrictions implemented
People living in regions with lower number of cases and no real social distancing restrictions

Select #2 because they have limited social contact and there is a lot of places like this on the planet right now. Not selecting #1 because those folks should contact doctors, #3 - lives of these people go on pretty much as normal.

Pain-points

What are the pain points for the people living in regions with high number of COVID-19 cases when it comes to having tools to build communities and staying connected with others (goal that I set at the beginning)

Community meetups canceled (e.g. professional conference, networking events, birthday parties...)
Entertainment events canceled (e.g concerts, sport events...)
Unable to visit friends and family (e.g. having friends over for dinner...)

Prioritization criteria: How many people experience it & how impactful if we solve (10 most, 0 least)

pain point	# of people	Impact	Final order
Community meetups canceled	6	8	1 (14)
Entertainment events canceled	4	5	3 (9)
Unable to visit friends	7	6	2 (13)

Selected community meet ups canceled - physical meet ups are vital part of any community whether it is a group of friends or a large volunteering organization.

Solutions

Solving for the pain point of canceled community meetups.

Enable creation of virtual meetups/events on Fb.
1. When creating an event, enable me to select the event to be a group video call through Fb Messenger or VR meetup using Oculus
2. For larger events enable Fb Live for the events to be streamlines
Give option to call/event organizers to have a virtual stage in the background so that the event looks more professional than if shot from the living room
Enable people to clap to emulate real world events and connection.
In Messenger, create a concept of “booths” - a lot of simultaneous calls happening where people can drop in to listen in and see if they are interested in joining the discussion. Similarly to what you would do when a group of people is talking in the real world.

Next steps

As mentioned in the assumption we would like to launch something soon as we don’t have many engineering resources to spend and COVID-19 is already causing events to be canceled and people to be socially isolated.

Therefore, I will first prioritize to easily add call or FB live link when creating an event.

Second I will work on launching the virtual “booth” experience on Facebook Messenger to enable more spontaneous encounters.

Lastly I will launch the background creation and clapping option.

My main metric will be number of monthly active users of the features (selected at the beginning as our goal)

Secondary metrics

Number of events created over time - does it increase after release of the feature?
% of all events that leverage the solutions we built.

kerplooey28 · Answer 12 · 2020-03-28T20:02:01+0000

Facebook is uniquely positioned to fight the spread of Covid-19:

A broad reach allows it to communicate critical information quickly
It has a trove of data on its users and can tailor and target messages as appropriate
It can stand up additional data collection mechanisms specific to Covid

The key tactics to fight the spread of Covid-19 are:

Contact tracing
Social distancing
Testing + subsequent actions based on individual cases (symptomatic vs. asymptomatic etc…)

I would bucket Facebook's options into two areas (they can be pursued in parallel):

Broadscale: available to all Facebook users
1. Up-to-date information
  1. Publish reliable data (from Gov, CDC) based on user's location
  2. Enable businesses on Facebook to update their pages with Covid-related information in a consistent manner (ex. Closed, Delivery Only)
  3. An interactive map of Covid metrics ("Cases in your area"….)
2. Relief
  1. Centralize information on relief efforts, allowing a localized view (donate to causes, buy business gift certificates)
  2. Targeted messages with request for help (particularly to businesses) - if you have extra masks, send them to xyz
3. Social
  1. Tools for users to connect with their friends during the crisis (casually checking on a friend all the way to an interactive group game)

Opt-in: requiring extra consent, will utilize user-generated data based on their interactions to provide an additional layer of functionality
1. Contact-tracing
  1. Allow infected users to identify themselves as such and automate messages to individuals with whom they've been in contact.
  2. Enable tracing via other Facebook products like Events and Locations/Recommendations
2. Social distancing
  1. Allow users to opt-in to help neighbors who need assistance due to social distancing (shopping, errands etc)
  2. Additional reminder messages about social distancing based on data (ex. An event is still scheduled, user in densely-populated area)

Additional considerations:

Data from this set of products should be made available to the CDC/local health authorities
Especially for #2 above, the users' ability to continue to supply data (diagnosis>symptoms?>status) is critical to enable the effective measurement of success. From there
Facebook would rely on existing measurement mechanisms (reach, views, engagement, sharing…) and would layer in official data on Covid-19 spread to measure success in reducing the spread