What innovative new product can make park gatherings be more social, with strangers?

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What innovative new product can make park gatherings be more social, with strangers?

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Mo14 · Answer 1 · 2020-05-31T03:26:08+0000

This Facebook product design PM interview question can be approach in several ways, but I'd use the following framework:

Clarifying questions: I am assuming this is a product for people who wants to meet new people at the park. And since it is meeting at the park, they would probably be looking for people who can do certain activities together. Also I will assume this is a app/website not a physical product.

Goal: To connect people who share simliar interests at the park so they can become friends and do activities together.

Users: I can see two different user groups.

1. People who go to the park

Dog walkers walking their dog
People doing various activities: runners, frisbee players, catchball, baseball, soccer etc.
People with kids going to the play ground
People just taking a stroll and enjoying the park

2. Parks and recreation

Provide information of the park
Attract people to use the park
Build community through parks

User needs: I will focus the users to be the people who go to the park for recreational reasons.

1. I want to know what parks are nearby - user has to go to each park website to check location, hours etc.

2. I want to know more information of the park - parking situation, facilities, dogs allowed, dog park, playground etc.

3. As a dog owner, I want to find a play date for my dog with similar energy level.

4. As a parent, I want to find a play date for my kid to play at the park.

5. As an athletic person, I want someone who can share the same activity as me.

6. I just want to hang out in the park and be able to talk to someone rather than go by myself.

Solutions: Although this is an app for connecting people socially, I think to delivery that mission, we need to first gather people to the park. So I will focus on user need 1 and 2 first to gather people to the park, and once people are gathered, I will focus on the conenction piece which is user needs 3-6.

#1-2

a. Create an app that shows all the parks that are nearby.

b. The app has detailed informations of the park that you are looking for. Kind of like yelp for parks.(Shows, pictures, how big, open times, parking information, playground, facility information etc.)

#3-6

a. People can use the app by creating profiles of themselves (or can sign in with Facebook profile).

b. Users that want to connect with people can tag which park they frequent and also select what their main activities are such as looking for a running partner, looking for a doggy play date, looking for someone to throw frisbey with etc.)

c. User can create sub profile for thereselves, dogs, or kids: For example user can create a soccer profile with details of how long they have played, how good they are, what position they play etc. For dog and child owners, they can create profiles for thier dogs and kids with age, energy level, personality etcs so that they can find the best play date matches.

d. The app shows real time data of who is at the park right now.

e. Users can message each other to set up meetings.

f. User can schedule meetings with other users through a scheduler.

g. Users can create groups within the app for people with same interest (e.g. Bichon owners group, 3T Parent group).

Prioritization: I've listed a lot of solutions as this is a new app and there are so many room for new features. But for launch I will think about what the real MVP is for the app to actually fulfill its purpose which is to "connect people at the park"

MVP

1-2.a is critical for this app since this is for people to meet up at parks so the location of the parks are very important.

3-6.a and 3-6.b is very important as well as users need to know who is willing to meet up and who has the same interest of activity at the park.

3-6.3 is needed for users to actually make a connection and set up meetings.

Fast Follow

I would like to implement 3-6.d as a fast follow so that users can casually meet up without having to go through scheduling. And also 3-6.c as it will had fun and uniquness to tha app to attract more users and increase rentention.

Risks

Safety is a risk for this app as people are technically meeting up with strangers. The app would need a reporting function so that any inappropriate users can be banned from the app.

Metrics

As this is a new app, awareness and aquistion is super importan metric to track.

1. How many people downloaded this app - would check daily, weekly, montly and also check WoW and MoM.

2. How many people have sigined up as a user? - would check same cadence.

Also need to check engagement and retention to see if the app is sticky enough.

3. How many people are using the app? DAU, WAU, MAU

4. How many people who have used the app are coming back to use it again? - % of users who have used in in the past 30 days.

Summary: To summarize I would like to create an app where users can see parks nearby and connect with people who goes to the same park and shares the same interest of activies. I would start with the MVP for launch and add more interesting features as we get more data from the users. For launch, I would take a close look at download and signup metrics and monitor the average usage and retention of the app to measure the success of the app.

tisvesalem · Answer 2 · 2019-10-04T21:00:31+0000

C: Clarify the scenario

                  Park Gatherings? Are you looking for a product that will bring people to the park, or a product that will engage people who are already in the park more social

                  By strangers do you mean meet at the spot type of strangers, or strangers that have expressed some sort of interest or another online and you know that they are at the location for a purpose or with some sort of hobby

Assuming that the interviewer clarifies that this would be a product that is to bring new people to the park, and the strangers would be people you never met before but know some information about through the web, we can start.

I: Identify the customers

Park activities can be seen as outdoor activities, and these activities are great when

                  1. The weather is great, and you want to enjoy the weather

                  2. It’s date night, and you want to do something special and unique

                  3. It’s spring season and the flowers are blooming

                  4. You want to enjoy the peace in the park

                  5. You have a pet of some sort that will be allowed in the park

tisvesalem · Answer 3 · 2019-10-04T21:00:15+0000

C: Clarify the scenario

                  Park Gatherings? Are you looking for a product that will bring people to the park, or a product that will engage people who are already in the park more social

                  By strangers do you mean meet at the spot type of strangers, or strangers that have expressed some sort of interest or another online and you know that they are at the location for a purpose or with some sort of hobby

Assuming that the interviewer clarifies that this would be a product that is to bring new people to the park, and the strangers would be people you never met before but know some information about through the web, we can start.

I: Identify the customers

Park activities can be seen as outdoor activities, and these activities are great when

                  1. The weather is great, and you want to enjoy the weather

                  2. It’s date night, and you want to do something special and unique

                  3. It’s spring season and the flowers are blooming

                  4. You want to enjoy the peace in the park

                  5. You have a pet of some sort that will be allowed in the park

R: Report the needs of the customers

                  Let’s think of the ideal workflow. The ideal workflow would be this.

1. You look online at the app for an activity you can do outside. You are informed of an activity that you can do at the park

2. You choose an activity you want to do at the park

3. You arrive at the place

4. You enjoy the event

5. You leave

Expand out

1. You look online at the app for an activity you can do at the park

                  a. Some common date activities include dinner, paint at the park, movies, picnic, reading, play acting. It usually would cost less if it is a one thing, instead of each person having a separate thing (like paint night) unless the event itself charged for each person’s materials beforehand. The inventory can be self-made or business ran. Offering yoga at the park, or pick-up basketball, you pick you choose.

                  b. Reservations/booking of the event itself should be accounted for, there should be a barrier of exit and a way to demotivate flaking so that materials and effort and spaces are not wasted.

                  c. Garner interest on the activity until the date of the activity. On the day of the activity the maker has the option to go through with the activity or cancel. If cancelled, one of the participants that agreed to go in the activity can get the torch of the event creator and continue or cancel as well. Scope to park-related activities by having the location of the events only be able to be set at the park

2. You come to the park to do the activity

Once at the park, you can look at the app and click on the event. Then it will send a notice to everyone within 1 mile from the park who has that app that an event is happening and everyone is free to join. If people who came to join your group comes near, you can send out a beacon of direction (AR) to lead the new people towards you. This allows random people to join as well as people who have already expressed interest to join at the park.

3. You enjoy the event

Depending on the event, the event coordinator can ask for material costs from the users to purchase materials. The payment made by the users will be handled by Facebook and the creator can get their materials reimbursed post event with a receipt and an above 3/5 feedback on the event from the users to ensure the fidelity of the park events.

4. If the event was a success and reoccurring events are desired, it can also be set up and use previously inputted information to reduce redundancy.

N · Answer 4 · 2019-02-17T14:52:00+0000

Clarifying Questions: - Are we talking about any particular park? or any park in general within a particular city? What is the business objective of this product? Apart from the park users, who else will be the stakeholders in the implementation of this product? What would be the monetization model of the product, if there is any?

Assuming the following:

I would go ahead with mobile based application that would provide a platform for all the park users to engage socially. I have selected mobile platform because on can potentially engage on the go, also while being in the park itself.

I am further assuming that app would include the information and details of all the available popular parks that are thronged by people within a particular city.

The users of the park would potentially be from the age group of 15 - 70 years. However, I would primarily target the age group of 15-50 years. Older users might not be tech savvy. However, the I would enlist all the potential use case or pain points that needs to be resolved.

A park user of any age group might have the following issues:

Not knowing anyone in the park. Feeling shy to approach anyone in person
Not having any information of the activities being organized in the park. In most cases, people get to know about activities only half way through. There is no prior information available unless one is a part of closed group that has scheduled or organized that activity
How to organize an event or engagement activity in the park
No information on the like minded people coming to the park and who to connect with
No digital platform to engage with fellow park users
Further, for people with 50+ years, with ailments, who frequent park all alone, there is no way to approach the medical emergency services
Also, if some one has to organize an event in the park, there is no readily available information on the governing authority body who administers the health of the park or who is an authority to manage the park.

Keeping all these painpoints or issues that people generally face, we can build the following features.

Mobile app would be platform that would allow users (Who frequent the park) to register themselves.
There will be information and details on different daily activities schedule and timings. There will be a provision, wherein the users would be allowed to join these activities, i.e., would opt in to be a part of these activities
Similarly, there would be provision to organize such activities. The user can also set the group number limit for such activities or can make it a closed group.
The professional details of the administrative authority would be enlisted in the app. The govt. officer can be approached and contacted.
There will be a provision for creating groups and doing group chats
There will also be a provision for one-one chat
In case some one wants to keep the identity private, that will also be possible. The login details would not be shared with anyone.
There will be provision to call the emergency number or ambulance from within the app

The associated user story with above mentioned features could be:

The user opens the app. The user registers himslef/herself by providing some basic information or linking the account with facebook or twitter, etc. The user would also mention interests.

The homes screen would include the list of parks in the city (based on the location of the user)

The user would select a particular park and see the list of engagement activities being scheduled in that park. The activity details would also be mentioned. User would also see the people attending those gatherings. User may choose to be a part of that activity by opting to join.

User will be able to create any number of groups of some interest areas and will be able to invite people (who have registered on the app) to join the group

There will be a provision for group chat and one-one chat

As a safety measure, ambulance services would be one phone call away. There would be the ambulance number mentioned in the app.

There would be an issue regarding the safety of park users. I would not want the park to be used for illegal activities. Hence, all the activities maintained in the app would be monitored by official authorities. Illegal activities would not be allowed and would not be mentioned. This also means that we would require a buy-in from local authorities to implement this.

These can be an ad-based model to begin with. In this way, we will get more downloads.

To begin with with my MVP, I would finalize some features basis the following criteria:

Cost
User impact
Time to market/Effort required
Competition

Considering all these parameters, I would initially launch the MVP with 1,2,3,5,6, and 7. The partnership with administrative authorities would consume lot of time and it would not be easy to get an easy buy-in.

Also, it would be just ad-based model initially. India being a price sensitive market, the free registration would lead to increased downloads.