If you have to build a new FB experience for your phone, what would you build?

Clarifying questions

What do we mean by new experience? A new product feature or improvement over existing product or feature?  I would assume it's improvement over existing feature 

Will this experience be part of core FB APP?  Yes

Is this new experience be available for both web and app? Both

Why do we want to build this experience? Increase engagement

Any constraints in terms of time and money? No constraints

FB mission

FB's mission is to bring people closer and give them tools to create community. So any new experience we design for any of the existing FB products or features must be inline with mission. There are several avenues to introduce a new experience within FB ecosystem. There are stories, newsfeed, rooms, messenger, pages, events, groups, marketplace, jobs etc.  and all of these are inline with FB's mission to bring people together. I would choose to focus on creating a new experience for FB stories as given their placement at the top of the page stories are a great way to attract attention and also this feature is mostly used by mobile users.

Goal

Company Goal: Increase engagement

Product Goal: Help people interact and engage more with stories

Metrics: # of stories created per user (D/W/M), increase in time spent on FB, # reactions on stories, total number of stories created

Users

Creators

• Individual users
  • Pro creators
  • Regular creators
  • Occasional creators
• Brands
• Artists/Infuencers

Viewers

• Individual users who can
  • mute a story from a friend
  • react on story
  • report a story

I would focus on individual story creators because the size of this segment is huge and within that occasional creators as I assume there is a potential for them to be converted into regular creators

Pain Points

1. I do not know what to create
2. I do not think creating stories is valuable as they disappear after 24 hours so I prefer posting on timeline instead so that it appears on other people's newsfeed
3. I do not find stories I watch very engaging, I would like to engage more with others via stories
4. I want to see how many people visited my profile page after watching my story

• Out of these I would proritize pain points 2 and 3 because they seem to be most related to issue of engaging users. Also, regarding pain point 1, there are already some solutions available - text story, mood, boomerang, selfie, poll etc.

Solutions

1. Stories on Timeline: Allow users to add stories to their timeline instead of putting it in archive
2. Stories Duration: Allow users to choose the duration for which stories are avaialable let's more than 24 hours
3. Stories with Call to Actions: 
   1. Stories with riddles: Allow users to show different fun riddles and puzzles for others to solve
      1. Text based riddles
      2. Riddle with animation
   2. Stories with fun activity: Add CTAs to stories that would generate a memorable experience which user can potentially capture and share on news feed. For example:
      • Let's go shopping 
        • User clicks on invite and enters FB room with a friend
        • Together they choose a common activity say 'shop together' - jewellery, clothes, etc
        • They see a list of relevant brand pages and brows images section and save links to images
        • They can also try product on their ARmojis and share reactions
        • They can choose to record their entire shopping experience
        • They can choose to share their shopping experience on FB timeline
      • Similary stories can be the starting point for other activities such as Let's dance together, Let's sing together etc.

I would prioritize solutions stories duration and stories with riddles first as these are low in effort and have potentially high user impact.

Next, I would focus on stories with fun activity starting with let's dance togther, sing together etc. We can leverage FB rooms here and allow users to create experiences which they can also share with others via timeline. This would be a high effort and high user impact solution.

I would ignore 1. as of now as sharing existing stories to timeline may not have a higher impact on user as user can choose to directly post content on feed instead of creating story.

Tradeoff

To much time spend on stories might cannibalize time spent on news feed

Stories with CTAs may reduce views and reactions on other stories as people might choose to remain on one story for a longer time

Metrics

Total Number of stories with CTAs created (D/W/M)

Average number of stories with CTAs created per user (D/W/M) - Primary

Average time spent on stories with CTAs (D/W/M)

Number of story experiences recorded and shared on news feed (D/W/M)

Average number of stories per user (D/W/M)

Time spent on FB (D/W/M)

Summary

To increase engagement on stories, I suggest users be given option to increase story display time and allow them to create more stories with CTA feature such as solve puzzles, let's shop, dance, sing together. Tradeoff can be that this might cannibalize time spent on newsfeed and other stories which may not be a bad thing if overall engagment is improving.