Design a Facebook product for helping people with isolation and boredom during the current lockdown.
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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
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)=1*0=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)=1*0.8=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
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.
- 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
- 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
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 |
- 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
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
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