Design a Facebook tool for the Olympics.

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Design a Facebook tool for the Olympics.

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Ian S. · Answer 1 · 2020-07-01T17:40:16+0000

My methodology for answering this Facebook product design interview question.

Facebook's mission is to empower people to build community and to bring the world closer together. The Olympics is an international event that unites people from around the world through sport, so it's great to think about how Facebook can create a tool for it.

Some clarifying questions:
1. Will this tool be released globally, or only to certain countries? [Assume: global rollout]
2. What data and video will we have access to for supporting the experience? [Assuming: all current/historical stats and access to all necessary media]
3. Is there a particular goal we want to achieve? Business-oriented or product-oriented? [Assuming: Product/Community centric]
4. Are there any partners that we can or must work with? [Assuming: No required partners, any necessary partnerships for success will be made, don't consider it a blocker]

Let's think about users for this tool

Fans of specific sports/events: These are users who follow a sport domestically in its normal season but now want to follow it at an international level. It can also include fans of Olympic events that are not typically broadcast to large global audiences (e.g. curling, shot put)
Fans of nations: Users who care about the performance of one or more nations in one, some, or all events
Fans of Specific Athletes: Supporters of individual athletes who want to see how well they perform in different events
"Just Seeking Spectacle": Users want to see the most amazing highlights and performances from the games and who may not necessarily be "sports people"
"Too Busy For Everything" - Users who want to stay on top of what's going on with the games, but who don't necessarily have the time to frequently be checking in on updates
Aspiring Olympians: Athletic users who are seeking their own Olympic opportunities (in reality, or just as an aspiration)
Current & Former Olympians: Users who can share unique insights and perspectives with others
Fantasy Sports Fans: (came up with this later, but they're an interesting segment to consider)

I'd like to focus on #5 - It's hard to stay on top of everything during the Olympics so this can be really helpful for a lot of people who don't have time to watch entire events, some of which take place at the same time. We may also be able to meet the needs of other user groups by addressing this group. For instance, people who are busy, but who want to follow the games....

...may have favorite athletes, sports/events, or nations whose performances/scores they would like to easily follow
...may be busy most of the time, but not all of the time. For instance, they may have much more time to engage with content and community over the weekends compared to during the week
...would still like to express how they feel about certain actions, plays, outcomes, etc. with friends and family. It just needs to happen at a more convenient time.

I'd like to brainstorm some solutions around the first bullet. The Olympics present audiences with information overload, and a busy person would appreciate a tool that makes it quick and easy to stay on top of what they think is most important to them.

Leveraging Messenger to provide users with a digest of relevant events / notifications. This can be a fun, conversational bot experience that can also be modified through a more formal experience on the Facebook website or in the mobile app. Users should be able to tell this bot what they want to stay informed about and whether they should be informed about certain things in real-time or on a regular schedule (e.g. at the beginning or end of the day). The bot could not only share scores/victories/defeats, but exceptional video clips and analysis could also be distributed.
This tool and messenger experience require a great onboarding experience that elicits interests and disinterests. It can also leverage data about what Friends are interested in to potentially broaden a user's set of interests (e.g. "11 of your friends are also following Women's Tennis"). After the onboarding experience is completed, users should be informed about the Messenger experience before being taken to a personalized dashboard. This provides the user with a richer and deeper experience compared to what they receive via Messenger and can more easily facilitate connections between Facebook friends over different elements
This tool could also generate a personalized "highlights experience" that gets pushed to users on a regular basis. This would recap what happened the previous day or since the user's last session. It could appear in a modified fashion to how "friend anniversaries" appear, moving through a stack of digital cards featuring text, photos, and videos set against music. This could recap a large number of events in a fun, fast, and effective way before allowing the user to explore what they saw more deeply if they choose to, or react to elements in some way.

All of these options are great ways for Facebook to serve busy users who still want to stay on top of what's happening during the Olympics. I particularly like the third option, as we can pull in lots of different data/content/media to serve up and really save the user a lot time by being proactive and keeping them from having to dig around for different information in different places.

Risks/Considerations: We'll want to keep in mind how people are (or aren't) engaging with this feature -- we may find that users think they're missing out on too much detail or information and start to ignore it over time. We may also find that users find the personalized replay/highlight experience to be too long and would prefer to skip it. Let's make sure we do a bit of user research here and also think about ways we can have users fine-tune their experience on-the-fly.

To summarize: The Olympics are a great opportunity for Facebook. After considering different user segments, we focused on a set of users who want to follow the games, but who are often quite busy. Creating a great way for these users to stay informed without them feeling like they have to go and search for specific information over and over again would be valuable, so we should consider building an engine that can create personalized "highlight reels" that can be pushed to users on a regular basis to keep them up-to-date in a fun way.

Shahid Athani · Answer 2 · 2020-07-01T16:25:30+0000

First attempt on this site. Hope it adds value. Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Goals: A tool which disseminates detailed information about various events, shows video highlights. pictures, & news articles related to the Olympics event.

Users:

Any user on the Facebook platform
Olympic Sponsors

Sponsors will push advertisements for their products and increase their reach. Revenue potential exists here.

For the purpose of this exercise, I'll concentrate on how the tool will look like for the normal Facebook user.

Needs:

Wants information about his/her country's Olympic performance. Current standing, performance in various events, etc.
Wants to follow a particular event in the Olympics. For eg: a person may want dedicated updates for football/basketball events even if his/her country is not participating in it
Wants information about upcoming highlight events. For eg: 100m finals, swimming finals, etc.
Wants detailed information about ongoing events. For eg: current score of a football match, goal scorers, cards, possession stats, etc.
Wants information about the participating players. Player Dashboard: Contains details related to previous performances at Olympics and other international events, pictures, videos, news articles about him/her.
Pictures, Video highlights, interviews, etc from the previous day in the feed or a dedicated section

Solutions:

Country-specific dashboards displayed according to the user's country of origin. Dashboard to contain
- Current Medal Tally
- Previous Results
- Upcoming Events
- Pictures/Videos
- News Articles
Users can follow specific sports or events. Notifications to be sent for any major activity pertaining to the followed events
Current scores for any ongoing event/match to be available upon clicking on that particular event/match. Details to be specific to that particular sport
A dedicated section displaying highlight events of the day. Clicking on the event gives all the relevant details about it.
Player Dashboard: Contains details related to previous performances at Olympics and other international events, pictures, videos, news articles about him/her.
Medal Tally standings, Event wise medal winners to be displayed in one dedicated section.
A sliding banner for all the concluded events of the day featuring the winners.

Metrics to Track:

Daily number of users accessing the tool
Daily number of users interacting with the content. Like/Comment/Share of posts
Number of users following a particular event
Time spent interacting with the tool.
Number of users clicking on the notifications sent about various events

PM Team · Answer 3 · 2020-07-01T16:25:26+0000

C- Comprehend the situation : Facebook is a social networking site where people join to know about their friends, keep the network going and post about their own. What we are asking here is to create a social networking site only for the olympics. Are we talking about General olympics games, summer olympics , winter olympics or olympic games setup or spreading word about the olympics. The overall metrics could be revenue generation, Active sessions (Engagement) , retention. Lets narrow it down to general olympic games' information and engagement is the metric to be measured.

I - Identify the customers : Based on the above the questions, we could narrow down who are the personas for whom the facbook tool has to be designed. Since we narrowed down general olympic games' information, the various personas here are the players, referees, future enthusaists, avid fans, casual news reader. Lets narrow down to avid fans.

R-Report Customer needs : Since we have narrowed down to avid fans, what would they intent to watch on facebook : all news related to the sport they like, participants, past information about the game and the players, sharing with friends that have the same passion, appreciate on the team's results and ability to post comments (their point of view). The non-funtional requirements could be low latency - immediate updates, send a hi to a friend, alert the user about the schedule.

C- Cut through prioritizations : Since there are so many needs, we could prioritize in the order of 1. alert about the game, 2. details about the game 3. game watch 4. Sharing 5.posting comments

L- List the solutions : Alert is possble only when the active session is on, since we are talking about Avid fans, how about sending an email or notification from Facebook that the game is about to start, integrate with emails / phone numbers to send the message, Though it seems to be a viable solution, there are concerns about privacy.

Another possible solution is details about the game/players could be integrated with blog posts / ranking based statistics on players, games and location.

Add an icon like hi-five or chest thumping whenevr a goal is made or a basket is hit to engage the user with the players.

E - Evaluate Tradeoffs :

As mentioned above privacy could be a valid concern when integrating with email/ phone texts. Another issue to think about that comes to mind is taking care of offensive comments.

S - Summarize : So overall we could design teh facebook for the olympic games with the main idea of involving the user enjoy the statistics, games and post play information. This could also be stored as a memory section.

Glenn Ryan · Answer 4 · 2021-11-22T21:15:53+0000

Clarify:

- is this for the summer or winter olympics? both? (both)

- what is the problem that we're trying to solve related to? (You choose)

- Is this inside of facebook or a separate solution? (you choose - we'll go inside of facebook)

Structure:

Mission

Identify a target User group

Pain Points

Goals

Solutions

Metrics

Summarize

1. Mission of facebook is to create community and bring the world closer together. The olympics is a perfect example of a sporting event that does just that as we all huddle around to watch our respective 'nation' community compete.

So the overall goal of the product should be something that connects people around the world to discuss and socialize about the olympics.

2. User group:

Digital Watchers (TV/etc)

- hardcore watchers (tracking every event, medal count, etc)

- casual view (see it while they're passing by)

Attendees

Athletes

Olympic workers

Businesses / Sponsors

We'll target the hardcore olmpics watchers at they're already passionate about the sport and also the largest audience that can generate excitement about the olmpics. Note that some even may attend the games but for our purposes we'll consider them people that are generally watching digitally.

3. Pain Points

- I want to watch events & know the schedule / times of all the events (HIGH)

- I want to know the medal count of each country (MED)

- I want to know when an especially exciting event /moment is happening (HIGH)

- I want to know the storylines behind the athletes (HIGH)

- I want to watch the an event that might be at a conflicting time w/ another (MED)

- I want to show my pride and excitement for an event/nation (MED)

I want to prioritize 1, 3, and 4 as they seem to be the highest impact to the user.

Solutions:

1. Olympics 'tab' that shows live footage of top trending events, based on interest and preferences. AI trains algorithm to show you what you'll be most excited to watch (HIGH / LOW)

2. schedule w/ upcoming & past events, and video racaps from past events. (HIGH / LOW)

3. VR solution that shows you live footage of the event that you'd like to watch. (HIGH / HIGH)

4. Create a 'room' where you can watch in the stands with friends of your choice or opponents from a fellow country (HIGH / HIGH)

5. AR solution that you can watch the event like it's going on in your own home (MED / HIGH)

6. Ability to comment, share, like and interact w/ fans from other countries. Auto-translation tool that help translate interactions (MED / LOW)

I would priorities 1, 2, and 3. 1 and 2 are basic 'tablestake' needs, while the VR functionality would really separate it out as an intersting feature. This could be through occulus or viewed as a traditional VR rotational view with your phone.

Metrics:

I would focus mainly on engagement:

-avg (median) time spend watching videos (or VR)

-# of users who watch at least 1 min of olympic video

-# of users who 'like/comment/share' at least 1 olympic video

-# videos watched per user (watched = at least 30 sec)

I would prioritize #3 because it shows how many users actually engaged socially with others about the olympics, which is directly related to our main goal.

Counter metrics:

-% of comments flagged as inappropriate / trolling

-lead time from enter olympics tab to play video

-video completion %

-cannibalization from overall time spent

-video load times

Summary:

We want to create a new page in facebook with VR functionality where users can watch the olympics and keep up with exciting events. The main goal is to get viewers of the olympics excited and interacting socially about the event. We'll focus on the # of users who 'like/comment/share' at least 1 olympic video as our north star metrics, but will be mindful that this doesn't tell the whole story.

Sharad Lahoti · Answer 5 · 2020-07-03T07:25:46+0000

Clarifying Questions -

Is this for the Facebook app? Assuming yes.
Are we assuming that olympics as pre-covid or post-covid? Assuming pre-covid.
Who is the product for? Viewers or Fans / Athletes / Organisers / Creators / Media

Facebook + Olympics

Facebooks mission : connect the world. stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them
Olympics : Global event. 100s of sports. Every 4 years. People follow their country's athletes, world's top sports-persons(like ussain bolt).
Hectic scheduling. With so many events - its difficult to follow everything at once.

As a viewer there can be following segments -

hardcore sports fans (can be for specific events or athletes)
casual sports fans (who would want to follow specific games, teams or countries)
non-fans (who would probably just keep tabs on whats happening, overall standings etc)

Another interesting segment could be Creators - for example Streamers/Commentators -

These are passionate & knowledgable people who can create their channel/streams covering live events with their commentary

Objectives for Facebook would be to -

Increase engagement :
1. DAU
2. Time Spent in app
3. Feed activities (posts, likes, shares and comments)
Increase revenue :
1. Ads
2. Subscriptions
Increase content/creators/influencers :
1. #of influencers/creators (DAU)
2. Follower metrics (subscribers/followers, content consumed, liked/shared)

From the target segment I am taking 2 segments - Casual Fans & Creators.

I am skipping hardcore fans as they would already have arrangements to follow the games. We can arguably make the experience better/cheaper but the segment would be probably smaller. And actually some of the hardcore fans can be targeted as creators.

Casual Sports Fans -

Keeping up with the schedule - reminders, bookmarking events they want to follow
Scores, Updates & news -
Don't miss it - when something special happening in terms of athlete's performances (like record breaking, first ever gold etc, great matches happening)
Watch it Live : subscribe and watch events live on the go. When multiple events are happening in parallel - it can queue them to give a sequential experience. Users can mute certain events results if they haven't seen it yet.
Highlight reel : with interesting comments/posts embedded with key moments
Scoreboard : tracking specific countries/games/athletes scores/performances
Know Your Athletes :

For creators - Here as creators I am considering individuals or group of friends (think equivalent of twitch streamers) and influencers like ex-athletes or commentators who can live commentate & chat via video/audio mediums.

Provide them opportunity to stream/live commentate on events happening
1. Provide them with Live feed with overlay options
2. Basic Production tools (graphics/replays etc)
Viewers get to see/follow the content and share specific episodes/clips
Revenue sharing with creators - basis the followers they have earned. Creator can have paid or ad-supported content.

Metrics for Creator products could be -

# of Daily active creators
Engagement metrics on the creator content (reach, likes, shares)
Revenue generates by the content
Followers/subscribers for the creators

PM Team · Answer 6 · 2020-07-02T20:31:07+0000

Goal: Facebook for Olympics.

To start with the solution for building a solution for the above Goal , couple of thnings are required to be clear.

a) What is Facebook's core competency: They are social networking platform whose primary focus is to build, connect and grow a community which will have like minded or like nature folks.

b) Facebook is already connecting people by several intersts like Entertainment/Sports/Politics along with like minded or liked nature traits.

Objecive: Now if we want stich the Goal with an objective which is : Facebook to be a place for connecting fans of Olympics so that they can get maximum update about the game. They can connect with like minded sports fans. They can share their views, comments live via facebook and can share the same with whole world.

If we just narrow down the Key Personas who can be most benefitted through this solutions are:

1. Alex- A 26 years old Sports Enthusiast. Working in a high demanding job. A place where all updates about the Game along with his regular FB connection updates will be a breezer for him.

2. Tom- A 68 years old retried Person. Recently learnt Facebook and got connected with few old friends. During his young age they all were big fan of a particular game. If they can share their Nostalgic moments through FB by sharing Live update from FB , it will bring a special Joy to them.

Proposed Solution:

F1. FB can bring a seprate tab at the header which can be connected with Olympics News/Live Video snippets/Live Comments so that Alex or Tom can easily toggle between their regular Wall updates and Game Updates and can choose their engagements.

F2. FB can flash the upcoming Game schedules and the previous day game results like a splashscreen everytime user logsin. So that user remains glued towards it for latest updates, instead of chasing various other sources of information

TradeOffs or Prioritsation: Per the Engineering team T-Shirt Sizing estimation and keeping the Release cycle in mind, F1 should be prioritised as 1st milestone delivery in roadmap. It can further be splitted into multiple epics for making release backlog sizable and easy to deliver.

Metrics: As an outcome of F1 , Facebook can measure their increase in DAU within 1st week fo Olympics Game. Based on user feedback or nature of views , contents can be revised

Number of Shares/Comments between Existing connections to be measured Vs New connections being made through Olympics app