Build a real esate product for FB.

 

Clarifying scope:

Me: Is there a particular area you would want me to focus on within real estates such as buy-sell or interior designing etc.

Interviewer: Let us stick to the buy-sell business

Me: Does this need to be within the Facebook app or a new standalone app
Interviewer: Your choice

Me: Is it ok to assume that the market we are focusing to be North America and we would start with Bay Area as our launch area? Since the housing market is hot in the Bay Area, we would be able to get great feedback from this region.

Interviewer: Yes

Me: Any preference for physical vs software app?

Interviewer: Your choice

 

 

Thank you. Summarizing the scope and assumption. I am the product manager of a new real estate product at FB, for the housing market in the Bay area. it could be within FB or a standalone app, including a physical product - I will let the pain points drive this. There are other dimensions that we can narrow down the scope which would help us in the build and rollout like the platform to focus such as mobile /iOS in case of a software solution. Does that sound good to you?

Interviewer: Yes, that is fair scope

 

Me: Now that I understand the question, Let me share a rough structure I have in mind.
I am going to think of what is important to Facebook and the goal of the app, then what we should build- such as users, pain points, and solutions, followed by final consideration like how would I measure success. Does that sound good to you?
Interviewer: Yes, go ahead.

 

Starting with mission and goal.
Me: I know Facebook's mission is to build community and bring people close together.
Given the mission, I could see reasons why this would fit the mission of Facebook since there are a lot of things that could be social with housing - such as posting when a house is on the market to a group of friends who may be interested (seller/agent), posting pictures of the house to get feedback from family (buyer), posting status on the house searches, a purchase, inviting friends to a house warming, etc. So I would say the product mission would be to bring people together through Real Estate.

 

Product Objective: In addition to the product mission, I would like to set a high-level objective to improve. We could look at adoption, engagement, retention, and monetization. I would like to deprioritize Monetization, given that our first goal should be building the most engaging experience for the user. Of the remaining 3, I would like to focus on engagement, since engagement is core to the product and demonstrates if we are adding value to the user and also a leading indicator of retention.

 

Me: Continuing, I would want to look at users, archetypes, personas. Could I take a minute to put my thoughts?

First, there are two primary sides to this, Seller and Buyer. There are other participants in this process like the agent, bank, county officials, etc. For this interview, I would focus on the buyers, since it is a large group/market and also I can personally empathize where I am still searching for that house :-(

 

Looking at segmenting the resident user group further across a few dimensions to identifying interesting user groups who may have interesting pain points, so that I could empathize with them.

 

Based on Demographics

Lifestage: Singles, adults with 2 or more kids, Seniors

 

Money: Lot of money vs who have saved to buy a home

Time: Who has a lot of time to do personal research vs who are dependent on others like agents

 

Based on engagement

Current state: First-time homebuyers to repeat buyers

 

Base on Motivation

Primary home vs a secondary like a holiday home or for investment purposes.

Buying a home in the locality you have stayed for long, vs buying a home because you moved to the place

 

From this list, few interesting user groups are adults with 2 or more kids, seniors, first-time home buyers. Of these user segments, I would want to focus on adults with 2 or more kids and first-time home buyers and a related segment of people who have moved to an area due to job change, etc. I believe these user groups are underserved and something that I can personally relate to as well.

Does that sound good?

Interviewer: I am good with the user segment you have selected.

 

Me: Thank you, Before I go to identify the pain points, summarizing: Product: an app for real estate, focused on buy-sell process, with a goal of engagement with a user group of buyers with a segment of adults with 2 or more kids buying their first home and have moved recently to the bay area.

 

User journey: Before purchasing a home - During the process of buying a home, post-purchase

 

Pre-purchase

1] I want to know more about the locality but I don't know enough about it since I am new to the place

2] I want to learn about the school district beyond its public rating, but I don't know the parents of the kids studying in the school district

3] I want to visit open houses, but I always get constrained by time and travel.

 

During purchase

4] I want to share the house I am looking for with my family and friends to collect feedback, but today I have to do so one by one and in a public forum.

5] I want to connect with my immediate neighbors and any previous owners /  to learn more about the house and the neighborhood

 

Post Purchase

6] I want to invite my friends and family over to house warming, but during Covid, I would like to throw a virtual function instead of physically inviting people.

 

Of these, if I have to narrow them down, I would choose to prioritize the pain points around pre-purchase, since there are no ready solutions available today that get these together and I see where the social aspect of Facebook will be of real value. Also, it matches the goal of the product of increasing engagement. Does that sound good?

 

a] AR/VR solution

that allows me to do virtual tours

lets me feel as if I am doing personal tours from the comfort of my home. I could extend it by even mapping furniture, etc.

b] A Parent buddy wizard (Like matchmaker)

where it takes inputs from the user about their kids

and connects with other parents to help them learn about the school

c] A neighborhood app

An app for the local community 

that lets you connect the neighbors in the community

 

Prioritizing the solution based on impact, effort, and as well mapping it to our goal ( i got feedback on my last answer to another q, to do a structural prioritization, hence the below table)

                         

a] AR/VR- Impact: H, Effort: H

b] A Connection maker wizard- Impact: H, Effort: L

c] A neighborhood app - Impact: H, Effort: L

 

The AR/VR solution is cool and is something that could be built on top of FB's Oculus business,  but given that it is a new app we are building I would not prioritize this, rather look at this to augment foundational solutions in the future.

 

Of the remaining two, the neighborhood app has competition like next door or Front Porch, which is focused on the larger community. Given this, I would focus on [b] and it directly addresses the pain point listed and is well in line with FB's mission.

 

Entry point: This will be a tab on top of the feed on FB. I will promote it by saying check this New Parents Buddy Wizard

How this works: The parents who are planning to purchase a house in a community, provide inputs such as the location, number of kids, kid's age, primary language, where they are moving from, and click on see the result. Based on AI/ML technology it tries to match with parents from that community who have volunteered to support new incoming kids and their families and say lists 3 options. 

Critical action: From the 3 options, the user then selects to connect with one of them or sets up a time for meeting them in person or virtually or message them through Facebook.

I also see how this solution does not need to tie only to buying scenario, but could also be extended to families moving in say for rent, etc.

Me: Any questions on the solution?

 

Interviewer: Good, could you let me know, how you would measure the success?

Me: As shared before, the standard set of metrics we can look at our adoption - how many are using, engagement - actions take while in the product, retention - number of users returning w-w, or m-m, monetization - tied to the revenue. For this solution, we will focus on engagement mapping back to our goal and demonstrates how active the users are and the value delivered. 

In the solution we discussed, the critical action the user would have performed was either to set up a meeting or contact the parent through Facebook messenger. Hence the metric I would focus on would be % people who enter the product and schedule a meeting or contact the parent.

 

While this a good metrics, I will discuss the downside of this singular metric and guard against by tracking additional metric.

- This metric does not tell about the other side - in our solution around parent volunteering, communities involved with this product, etc.

- Also, it is not clear what is driving this metric, meaning if the metric is low, why is that so- So I would want to track additional metrics like drop-off rate per screen, the number of options, how strong the options and matches were, click rates.

Finally some broad metrics like cannibalization with other FB experiences - like avg. time spent on FB/user, feedback post the buddy program on the effectiveness of the matching algorithm, etc. not to have AI bias.

 

Let me summarize: Product: an app for real estate, focused on buy-sell process, with a goal of engagement with a user group of buyers with a segment of adults with 2 or more kids buying their first home and have moved recently to the bay area. We identified the pain points and prioritized to focus on parents wanting to learn about the school district and school options. We brainstormed a few solutions, narrowed them down to a Parent Buddy wizard that helps connect moving-in parents with the other parents in the school district. We also looked at metrics and counter metrics to guard against. I see this just as a starting point, we looked at only one user segment, one solution. I could see how this will help FB build a strong community and invest in this heavily.