Design a Facebook product for helping people with isolation and boredom during the current lockdown.

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Design a Facebook product for helping people with isolation and boredom during the current lockdown.

Asked at Meta (Facebook) over a year ago

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Patikoo · Answer 1 · 2020-04-16T02:38:58+0000

Design a FB product for helping people with isolation and boredom during the current lockdown.

Clarification questions?

Is there a specific demographic the product is meant to help?
What are the constraints to be aware of?
Which device and OS are building for?
Do you want an app or a web app?
What is the budget?

I want to structure my answer in few points: 1- Business Goals / 2- User segments / 3- User needs / 4- Possible Solutions / 5-Prioritization

1- Business Goals: To help people stay busy and entertained while building stronger social networks with their family/friends and thus further the mission of the company of bringing the world together and offering tools to build communities.

2- User segments

Adults
Children
University student ⇒ ⇒ For the purpose of this exercise, I will focus on university students who returned in the family because the campus is closed. This demographic group is larger and could have a big impact on the Facebook mission. I specifically target people aged between 19 - 25 years old.

3- User problems

Student need to find something new to do after having watched everything on Netflix
Student can’t go outside and visite friends and family because of stay-at-home restrictions
Student wants to be creative, useful and productive while having fun.
Student feel bore and spend most of their time doing nothing
Student wants to be productive and learn new skills
Still they want to connect with new friends and do things together.
Isolation is causing mental health problems for many people.

4- Possible solutions to solve this:

A tool to find instructors led classes online where they can learn new skills Eg: Meditation, Cooking, Drawing, Photography. This will give possibilities to meet and interact with other participants.
A tool for a student to volunteer as a teacher to help kids from all over the world do homework and teach a foreign language
A tool to find, start a social /viral challenge and to participate in one you care about

5-Prioritization

Considering the ratio effort and impact, I will focus on building the social challenge service. It is relatively easy to release an MVP for people to find available challenges, create new challenges or record themselves taking part in a challenge. This tool will come as mobile but also available via the Facebook site. The virality of the concept would help reach a broad audience faster, thus achieve the Facebook mission.

Success Metrics:

DAU and WAU metrics for participants
# of social challenges completed.
Total # of participants to the challenges in general

Amelia Leigner · Answer 2 · 2020-05-17T13:46:20+0000

Goal: To help people with isolation and boredom during the current lockdown.

Value: community

Potential user groups:

People working from home
Unemployed people
High school and college students

I see the most potential for engagement with students that would normally be in class or out with their friends. So I will focus on developing a product for high school and college students.

Pain points:

Students can’t hang out with their friends in person

Miss seeing their friends
Do not know who is available to talk
Do not have ideas of what to do
They have watched everything on Netflix already
They are fighting with their parents or siblings
They do not have the support of teachers, counselors from their school
They don’t have people to study with
Students to get encouragement / motivation to get schoolwork done

Already existing solutions/products:

Texting
Zoom calls/group video calls
Facebook chat
Streaming services - Hulu, Netlfix, Quibi
Social media - Tik tok, instragram, snapchat

Compared to other solutions, I would want to create a vehicle to foster real connections and promote community and support rather than feeling disengaged or disingenuous.

Idea	Value	Cost/Effort	Risk	Priority Score
Online support group that would be an extension of the Facebook messenger app - The group would be divided into a variety of topics such as “Meet New People” or “Video Games” or “Dealing with Anxiety” or “Movie Discussion” and users could join in the conversation to talk to other people	9	8	1	(9-8)(1-1.0)=10=0
Status for FB messenger to show that you’re available to work together or available to talk about smth (similar to Slack)	5	4	.2	(5-4)(1-0.2)=10.8=0.8
Create a streaming platfom to show short movies or videos with a messenger section where people could connect with other people watching the shows	7	7	.6	(7-7)*(1-0.6)=0

Priority = (Value - Cost)*(1-risk level)

Will move forward with Idea #2.

Metrics to determine success:

% of users in target audience that use the feature
Increase in new FB messenger conversations

Vikas Deshmane · Answer 3 · 2020-05-17T06:40:34+0000

Business case:

Goal - Facebook's Mission is to connect people worldwide and communicate seamlessly.

Feature - To build a feature that helps people to overcome the boredom during the lockdown. If the Investment is made then, the company should be able to reap benefits post-Lockdown as well through effective engagement.

User Group:

College students (18-22 Years)- The university level college students who which to connect their classmates during the lockdown and connect their peers
The working group(22 -57 Years) - The working group who use Facebook to communicate with their school friends, college, school mates and co-workers
Retired population - The retired persons who use Facebook to keep in touch with their previous colleagues, relatives, neighbors, etc.

I would select the Working group. Because, that could be the most profitable with the highest disposable income and most of the population lies in this group only. Morever, from a long term perspective, it would help Facebook to grab a Market share from Linkedin and bring Facebook's aim of Job portal closer to achievable.

User Journey:

User Logs into the Facebook through the Login id and password and accesses his homepage - where he gets updates from his friends, pages/ interest which he follows
He sees the notifications in top bar - messages, tags, mentions, updates on the posts

Pain points:

He needs to utilize the additional time he got from the Lockdown and is unconnected to his office colleagues
He is disconnected from his interests and external world and is getting bored with the daily routine activities at home

Solution:

Sr.no FeatureReach(R)
Impact(I)Confidence(C)Effort(E)Score

(R X I XC)/ E

1.	Events - Nostalgia events with the school/ college/ Aim - to connect the disconnected employees, get updates about their friends, connect	60 % of the target audience	High(4)	High( 4)	Very Low ( 1- Existing Facebook events feature can be utilized)	9.6
2.	Goal Planner - Allow the users to select the goal that they are trying to achieve during the Lockdown. The goals can be: 1. Learn a new skill 2. Get fitter - through Yoga, exercises at home 3. Complete reading a book 4. Watch a set of movies For example - If user has chosen to learn a new skill then an adaptive plan will be shown to him and progress tracker along with that. Also, users connect with like-minded peers who are trying to achieve the same goal. It will also help to develop Facebook an e-learning platform for the users and get the professional details of the user. The acquisition of users would help Facebook to compete with Linkedin In future	80 percent of the audience	Very High(5)	Very High(100%)	Medium (The tie-ups with the e-book providers, Prime, etc is required and development effort as well)	6.66
3	Virtual Tours which will help People wish to visit multiple places of their choice in virtual mode This would help them to experience new cultures, the history of the places without getting out of the home. And, it would also incline users to actually visit the place, once the Lockdown is lifted. Increased globalization and achieves the goal of bringing the world closer.	70 percent	High(4)	High(4)	Very High (5)- Nothing is available. Building Virtual reality technology is time-consuming and the	2.24
4	Events - Webinars, Rock band shows -which allows rock starts or the event enablers to perform from home	50 percent	Medium (3)	Medium(3)	Medium(3) - existing framework can be used with minimum modifications	1.5

Prioritization

Based on the RICE score - I will prioritize the Nostalgia event first and then Goal planner.
If the time allows the development ten I will pick the virtual tours and then Events - If the time remaining is less for the development of virtual tours then the confidence becomes zero and the Events RICE score will go up

Metrics -

Based on the new feature developed, I will track the following metrics:

1. MAU/ DAU users during the lockdown

2. The %age increase/decrease in the MAU and the DAU numbers during compared to the time before lockdown

3. The number of Nostalgia events created, attended

4. The number of Virtual tours completed

5. Increase in the likes of different interest pages?

6. Goal achievement amongst users

Summary:

From the exploratory analysis of the multiple features for the working population, it would be wiser to with the Nostalgia videos first with the existing infra while working on the Goal Planner to increase the user engagement

PMVision · Answer 4 · 2020-05-06T19:08:53+0000

What is the goal?

User growth

Monetization

User engagement

Define Customer - which target audience we are buliding the product for

Employees who are able to WFH

Frontline workers who are still working

Kids -age group 6 - 12

High school/ college students

For the sake of this exercise I will pick Kids - age group 6-12

User Pain points

schools are closed

less physical activity

parents are working from home and do not have the time to work with the kids during the day

no social interaction

unable to see thier friends

have to do homework in isolation

parents do not want the kid to have to much screen time

Proposed features

1. Build a Virtual Reality based Game app that require the kid to move such as sprinting

2. Have a selection of age appropriate games so the kids do not get bored

3. Kids like to play with other kids, have an option where the parents can schedule a game time with thier friends.

4. The game maintains score based on thier physical performance. How many steps per minute + height of each step.

5. Connect feature- kid can add kids from thier school, from the neighbourhood, cousins

6. The app notifies when thier friends are online

Priortization

#1 Must have - for MVP the app can start with the couple of simple games

#2 Nice to have - future release

#3 Nice to Have

#4 Must have , children care about how they are doing. Quantitive feedback is critical to keep them coming back to the app

#5 Must Have for reasons listed above

#6 Must have for reasons listed above