Design a social travel product.

 

Clarifying Questions

First of all I want to understand what type of company we are, are we a social media kind of a company or we are a travel tech company or we are a small startup who wants to get into this space?

Reply: Social Network Company

What does this product do? Reply: Help people in connect and have good travel experience together.

Where do we operate, and what is the demography where we want to start this? Reply: India

Competitors? Reply: Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and other Social Apps

 

 

Product Lifecycle 

Adoption > Engagement > Retention > Monetisation 

For this exercise I will go with Adoption and Engagement because we are building a new product so I will focus on users adopt and start using this product

 

User Segment and Prioritisation

• Casual Travellers: (Impact: Low, Scale: High)
• Frequent Travellers: (Impact: Mid, Scale: Mid)
• Serious Travellers: (Impact: High, Scale: Mid)
• Hostel/ Hotel Owners/ Restaurant: (Impact: Low, Scale: Mid)

Problems of Serious Travellers and how they are solving it.

Pain PointsHow they are solving itImpactScale

Don’t have budgeted stay if planning for a long stay.	They generally look for home stays as they are less expensive in local areas	Low	High
Didn’t have their photos if shot on someone else’s phone after travelling, and forgot to ask them to share after few days.	They call them and collect photo on whatsapp or ask them to upload photos on drive	High	High
Want to explore new cafes, spots but not able to find many.	People generally ask someone from same hostels and other tourist where they are going, what they like	Low	High
Want to share their experience of different places.	People share it with other people when they meet them in common places	Mid	Low
Commuting to different places is costly for them	People connect and plan their commute together	Low	High

I will go with problem of “Sharing photos of trip” as collecting photos after a trip is a very painful tasks, people don’t have their photos which they have clicked and collecting photos can take 7-10 days after the trip from my experience. Whatsapp also decreases the quality of photos.

 

Solution

SolutionRiskEffortImpact

Users can create an album in app where photos get auto uploaded of a certain date range of users in that album	low	Medium	High
User can create a drive link and ask to share the photos in that link where we can remind them who have uploaded the photos or not.	Low	Low	Mid

Solution 1: This can change the TAT of having the trip folder to almost 0 days, your album will get created automatically as you progress on your trip.

Success Metric: No. of an albums created and Average of (Total Media/ Group size)

 

For clarification, 

1.If it would a Web or mobile application, I'll assume to choose the most portable option. 

2. What will my social travel product do - help friends plan trips, manage itinerary, manage bookings, make recommendations on activities to do in the area.

3. Who is my user -- friends planning a vacation?   they live in different cities but always wanna stay in touch. More time-constrainted for planning.

family planning vacation -- live in different cities but usually only one person takes care of bookings -- so not the most important group to consider.

community organisers who need to plan a retreat - for community or work. -- apps like this would be helpful to them since it is  very subtlely formal way of keeping everything organised, building more community from around the world, connecting people like facebook likes it. Not going with the option cause it eventually is work-related and they might have their own corporate social travel product so choosing this product over, would be a stretch.

So, I believe this product will be best used by friends. Lets go over some user pain points:

1. Time constrained because busy with college/work/school. -- not able to get on call due to social anxiety, busy

2. Not able to keep tracks of booking that has been made. - dont know what has already been checked off the list sometimes.

3. Everyone's choices are different. - choose different day activity

4. Sharing itinerary manually is a pain. send each reservation seperately, gets lost in email

5. Keeping track of expense- lose track of how much has been already spent

Prioritizing the user needs -- 

1. Keeping track of bookings made / refunds

2. Itinerary easily accessible to the group 

3. Keeping track of expenses made

4. A way to express like/dislike for a -- flight/stay/activity -- everyone is different

I choose user needs 1-4.  My goals with this product would be

- acquistion - other travel apps available in the market so acquistion would be a good metric to determine success/failure

- retention - is it worthy to be used for a second trip or just makes life more difficult? gives us a better idea how to improve it.

Solutions for user needs:

1. Having a group chat bucket with easy accesible buttons to look at bookings already made for the group, uploaded via email or another travel product.  [effort - medium, acquistion - medium ( takes a bit more effort for cross platform uploads/downloads), retention -- high ( keeps track of their trip, can come back to share with another friend group)] 

2. An itinerary for the group mapped from the bookings that have been already added to the product. [ effort- low, acquistion and retention- high value add for large groups]

3. Using AI to understand each ones like/dislike in the group and suggesting a custom itinerary mixed with fun things happening around and the already made bookings.[effort - medium to high, acquistion and retention -- high customization makes users feel values) 

5. Showing each ones already made expense on that particular trip.(effort low , acquistion and retention -- low)

6. Chat option to suggest new recommendation and be able to add emoji to the recommendation..  (effort - medium , acquistion and retention high, users feel heard and valued -- gives them purpose to use this particularly app between friend groups like splitwise)

Prioritizing user solutions

1. Booking list view -- must have

2. An itineray based on imported bookings -- must have

3. Showing expenses made -- must have

4. Chat option for expression -- must have

5. Custom itinerary using AI is a good feature to have but for MVP can be skipped

Product Vision -- A social travel product that makes travel choices easier, consolidated, organises, shared and easily accesible by friends.

Metrics

Acquistion - number of groups created, number of user/group, 

Rentention- number of booking uploaded, number of chat exchanges during the month, second trip planning

Primary -- Number of people planning second trips? -- tells us if the app is actualy solving their problems or is cubersome

Secondary -- no of bookings made, number of groups created, no of idead/chat exchanged

**This is a very informal way of typing this but will appreciate any reviews.**

 

 

 

I will use the 5Cs framework to suggest if facebook should enter traveling space:

 

Customers: Traveling users 

 

Persona: 

tech savvy, could be solo travelers, could be travelers with family, could want to explore different types of stays/experiences from cooking to museums to best restaurants to best shows. Usually use google maps to plan travel by checking reviews, number of reviews, times of opening and closing, photos, etc.

 

Needs: (drawing from Airbnb)

1. Need a place to stay

2. Need help with experiences that are popular, that are open during their time

3. Would also want to post their travel stories on Instagram (already done)

 

Company: 

• When considering Facebook, I am also looking at Instagram which is bought by Facebook 

• Instagram already has many users sharing stories on how to plan their travel, where to stay and what to eat etc.

• Facebook also has a marketplace wherein someone can post their object, set a price, and sell items. Facebook can leverage some tech capabilities of this platform to enter the travel industry.

Solution:

• Additionally, Instagram can suggest users on top hotspots in the city by giving a number of users who checked in from that location and also making posts/stories available depending on user settings. -> which would really help users plan to go to top localities in the city and also check posts/reviews of that place from a close friends (similar to snap map)

• Instagram can also suggest the experiences I would like based on my friend's check-ins and the kind of content I liked

• I would suggest Instagram go with Need #2 before exploring Need #1 by placing on the data collected till now

• Instagram could give categories of experiences that user likes. 

• If a lot of users are engaging with the product, it can go further asking companies/small businesses to list their experiences and take percentage on very booking

• It is in a way making people come closer by making stories of their past experiences shared (like google photos memories)

 

1 out of 3 basic needs is already fulfilled by the company.

 

Competitors

• All the travelling companies are competitors like airbnb, yatra, makemytrip etc. which do not have advantage that facebook have of already created habit where users want to post stories

 

Climate: Given wfh scenario, a lot of users are keen to travel

 

Collaborators:

• Airbnb has a lot of listings and been a reputed player all around the world for places to stay. FB can collaborate with airbnb to even suggest places to stay along with reviews while users is choosing a travel destination.

 

Step 1: Ask clarifying questions to narrow down the scope of the question/product

1) Are we designing a web based or mobile based product? (Mobile)

2) Will it be available on Android or IOS or both? (Both)

3) Are we building a new stand-alone product or are we integrating it with an already exisiting social networking platform? (New)

4) Is the product confined to a particular specific region? (No)

 

 

Step 2: List down the User Groups 

The main users for such kind of product are as follows: 

1) Power Travelers: These are the users who travel very frequently either for fun or work (business). 

2) Casual Travelers: These are users who travel occasionally 

3) Travel agents/agencies: 

 

Step 3: Select/choose one User group and state your reason for the same 

For the scope of this question we will be going with Power Travelers as these are the  users who will be using this product the most and thus derive max value from such kind of product 

 

Step 4:  List down the User Pain-Points 

 

1) Users don't know where to travel next? 

2) Searching for places to travel is a very time consuming process

3)  There's no way for users to know where their friends are travelling or have traveled in the past?

4) Users want a way by which they can give feedback/rating to the place they just visited?

5)  Users want to know about the places to visit, tourist attraction of the place where they going?

6) They want to search and book for accomodation from here itself?

7) Don't know which hotel is good and which is not?

8) Don't know if the payment gateway is safe and for this reason dont wan't to pay the entire money upfront

 

Step 5: Prioritise the User Pain-Points based on criterias like Impact to End User, Impact to Business Value

Pain Point #	Impact to End User	Impact to Business Value
1	H	H
2	M	M
3	M	H
4	M	M
5	H	H
6	M	M
7	M	M

8                       M                                   M

 

Based on the above criterias we have prioritised pain-points 1,3,5 for the MVP of this product, the other features will be developed in the later releases iteratively.

 

Step 6: List down the Solutions for these Prioritised Pain-Points

1) Users don't know where to travel next?

Solution- A) An AI Based  feature called Likelihood to travel that will recommend the person places based on their search history, choice/interest, where their friends have visited recently

3)  There's no way for users to know where their friends are travelling or have traveled in the past? 

A) With the find friend feature, they can find where their friends are traveling or have traveled in the past

5)  Users want to know about the places to visit, tourist attraction of the place where they going?

A) Chatbot feature- That will tell the user about the top places to visit, tourist attractions etc 

B) Once you decide the place there will be link to articles and videos of nearby places and things to do there 

C) Users can connect(via chat) with their friends/others in the network who went there 

 

Step 7: Prioritise the solutions 

Now let's prioritise the solutions based on criterias like Impact to End User, Implementation Effort and Implementation Cost.

Solution #	Impact to End User	Effort	Cost
1 A	H	H	M
3 A	H	M/H	M/H
5 A	M/H	M	L/M
5 B	M	L	L
5 C	H	L	M

 

Based on the above criteria we will finalising solutions 5B and 5C

 Once you decide the place there will be link to articles and videos of nearby places and things to do there 

Users can connect(via chat) with their friends/others in the network who went there 

 

Step 8: List down the user metrics to be tracked. 

1) % of users who watch the video and read articles after they have decided to go to a place 

2) avg # of(DAU,WAU, MAU) users using the chat with friend feature to know about the things to do and tourist attractions at the place 

3) Increase in customer satisfaction after using the chat feature 

4) Avg time spent reading articles/video per user on a daily, weekly, monthly basis 

 

Step 9: Summarize your answer.

Ask: Design a social travel product

Let’s clarify few details:

1) We are looking to build a product to make it easier for travelers to travel for leisure

2) This product can be a Hardware/Software product

3) Are we a startup/Facebook/Government agency? - I am assuming a startup

4) Are we looking to build for a specific geo? - Not specifically, assuming global
 

5) Any specific problem we are trying to solve or an audience target? - I am going to assume that we are looking to solve for 65+ years old
 

Mission: Products mission is to enable 65+ year old to travel socially with ease

User Segments:

Since we have already chosen to solve for 65+ year old, we have done one level of segmentation. I will try to understand this segment better.  Current travel solution available are mostly geared towards younger people, solving for this segment can be a game changer. We can segment these users around multiple axis:

1) Independent travelers (users living in private homes) v/s Assited living travelers (these are users living in an assisted living facility)

2) Travelers travelling to a location where they speak local language v/s travelers travelling to location where they don’t speak local language. Let’s call this segment as local language v/s foreign language travelers

3) Domestic or short distance v/s international travelers

 

I will solve for 1, 'Assisted living travelers’ Lets call them 'elderlies.  As part of this we can look at pain points for local language, foreign language, domestic, international travelers. Focusing on this segment because this is a segment where I don’t think any current solutions exists that I am aware off. Also, this seems to be one of the hardest segments, if we are able to find solution for this, we could possibly use similar solution 'Independent traveler' segment.

 

Pain point:

1) Booking Travel : These dependent travelers may need help with travel booking. It is at times hard to find a travel destination that fits ones needs and book a trip

2) Safety concerns: Elderlies may have safety concerns while travelling to a new place

3) Pre trip planning/packing assistance

4) Assistance during travel, while on route

5) Pricing: Elderlies may be pensioners and have price constrains

Now let us prioritize these pain points. I am using metrics like frequency of pain point, reach, severity, impact and ability to address to quickly prioritize these and give each pain point a cumulative High, Medium or Low score.

1) Booking Travel: High 2) Safety concerns:High 3) Pre trip planning/packing assistance – Low (assuming this is currently available in assisted living facility) 4) Assistance during travel, while on route – Low (assuming this is currently available in assisted living facility) 5) Pricing:  - Medium

 

I am prioritizing on solving for 1 above. This is one of the first concerns in the user journey. If time permits, we can explore how we can expand solution to solve for other problems as well.

Solutions:

1) Build an app to help book elderlies book travels on their own in a very simplified manner. They can network with other friends and family who would like to join on travel, or network with other solo travelers.

2) Build an AR/VR solution to help elderlies better know the travel destination and experience travel in a more immersive way

3) Build an app/website for Assited living facilities, to plan trips for a group of elderlies living at their facility. This app can have some pre-defined tours that elderlies can opt-in for.

Now let us prioritize solution: I am using metrics of Impact, Cost and strategic alignment to mission, to give a High, Medium, Low priority.

1)  High 2) Low 3) Medium

I am prioritizing solution # 1 above. This solution can be expanded to address safety concerns by providing regular update to friends and family about travel. This app can be evolved to integrate with a wearable tracker as well. Gig workers can be added to the app, who can assist elderlies with pre trip planning or while they are on travel.

Summary:

Products mission is to develop an app to enable elderlies travel socially with ease.  In order to do so, we are focusing on the pain point for them to book travels on their own. As a solution we will develop an app, where elderlies can book trip in a simplified manner. This app can be evolved to address other key pain points

Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.

You asked me what I would build as the PM for Facebook Travel.

The way I think about Facebook Travel is that it enables Facebook's users to engage with people around the world, get to see and experience new places and culture, and maybe make new friends. This is directly related to FB's mission.

 

Restate

Did you have any specific direction you would like me to think about the FB travel product? When you say social travel product, is this something built within Facebook platform or a standalone app?

When you are looking to launch this, are you targeting a particular user group? Or a particular geography?

Can i ask what the motivation is, behind this? Have there been any preliminary data to indicate that there is a need for this product?

Does it have to be any different from other travel apps out there? Like - Tripit etc?

Social - lets qualify this - it means, something that enables connections, companionship, meaning interactions etc.

Travel - lets qualify this - this could be domestic/internation travel for vacation, office commute, business trips.

 

Interviewer: you can make your own assumptions.

Ok.  Lets proceed with the following assumptions:

1. Its part of the FB app, and it's a US based launch at the start. We will launch via an A/B to our identified demographic.

 

This is how I plan to approach the problem.

• Think about Travel and what it means to users
• What are the different user segments for this product
• User cases and pain points
• Brainstorm ideas for the pain points
• Final set of prioritized ideas

 

Users have travelled for 100s of years but in the last 10 years traveling has picked up due to the ease of discovering places, online booking and the reduction of air fare of the years (race to the bottom). To an extent there is too much information (places to go), ways to book now that might overwhelm busy folks who are trying to book a trip without a trusted travel agent.

 

I would like to take a minute to think about user segments:

The user segments I can think of are as follows: 

 

1. Young travelers. - These could be young workers / university students who are seeking an adventure locally/internationally. These traveler's are price sensitive, and might be willing to spend the time to find the best deal.
2. Families with kids - parents with multiple kids who want to have a kid friendly vacation, as well as would like to avail of some kid friendly facilities - shared rides, car seat rentals etc. This is the busiest segment that has the least amount of time to plan a vacation/deal with trip interruptions.
3. Retirees - These are older people who might sometimes be single travellers and want to travel in a group to areas of historical significance or culture. They tend to be more price agnostic and are able to take longer trips.

 

 

Lets focus on Families with Kids for the purpose of our discussion. Some of the key pain points for a family booking a vacation are as follows:

 

1. Finding a kid friendly, safe place to stay
   1. Some considerations here are food prep especially if the kids are sensitive to any allergens, stroller friendliness, location safety
2. Activities during the trip
   1. Some considerations here are what are kid friendly activities, how long would they take, how far from where the family is staying, local parks / activities. Local experiences
3. Post trip memory organization
   1. Ensuring that all of the memories from the trip are edited, archived shared with family and friends.

 

 

 

Out of these  #3 is an area where FB currently does a good job with helping with tagging of photos and sharing with group, and any changes would be an incremental ad. Same with # 1 - this could be incremental filters on the FB Local search experience 

 

For the purpose of this discussion I would like to focus on #2 - Activities during the trip as this expands the pie for Facebook and could potentially open up a new payments based revenue stream for FB long term.

 

Vision

I envision the FB Travel to be a FB travel concierge that will enable people to a)book trips, b) complete a trip and c(share their memories seamlessly. In 5 years - you could imagine FB / IG having the ability to create videos based on all of the trips a user has taken to create a living movie on a user's journey through their travel. For eg - through AI FB Travel could show a user their paddle-boarding adventures through the years in different locations. 

 

Solutions

I am going to pause for a minute to brainstorm some ideas for solutions for the FB Travel concierge product targeted at "Families with kids". 

 

1. Provide a list of activities organized by age group and reviews
2. Provide a list of trusted businesses that offer activity with reviews
3. Provide users a simple way to interact with businesses and book activities
4. Provide users the ability to get memories from the businesses during activity
5. Provide users the ability to get memories from other users during activity
6. Ability to join a local parents group to hear about local attractions.
7. Provide an itinerary builder once a user has selected activities

 

Out of all of these I would like to focus on #1 as it is the start on the funnel and helps get a user to the consideration phase thinking about what activities they might want to go ahead and try out. The list should be able to provide rich meta data like videos on the activity both professional (business provided) or user sourced, reviews and key highlights. 

One a user gets to the consideration phase #2 and #3 the user can leverage FB's existing communication tools What's App / Messenger to interact with the business and complete a transaction.

 

To summarize, we discussed the following:

Building a FB Travel concierge that will help FB users experience the world at large and connect with the global community. We will focus on the Families with Kids user segment at the start, and specifically provide these families with the tools to consider activities per age group, and then interact with local businesses to book the activity. Finally FB will help the user consolidate memories from the user, other participant and the business in a privacy aware seamless manner.

 

Core Metrics:

 

• # of user that interact with the activity feed
• # of activities booked 
• Activity feedback review posted by the user
• # of activities added to the itinerary per user 

 

Risks/Pitfalls:

• Businesses are not actively engaged on the activity feed
• Parents are sensitive about providing ages of children/booking with small business providers pre trip.
• Feed hygiene - is the business data feed quality good?

Qn: Design a social travel product

Lets first define the goal of the product and what this means. 

Clarifying questions:

1. When you say social travel product, is this something built within Facebook platform or a standalone app?
2. When you are looking to launch this, are you targeting a particular user group? Or a particular geography?
3. Can i ask what the motivation is, behind this? Have there been any preliminary data to indicate that there is a need for this product? 
4. Does it have to be any different from other travel apps out there? Like - Tripit etc?
5. Social - lets qualify this - it means, something that enables connections, companionship, meaning interactions etc.
6. Travel - lets qualify this - this could be domestic/internation travel for vacation, office commute, business trips.

• Business travelers
• Vacation travelers

• Quick travel profile setup - with company prefered airlines, seat preferences, hotel preferences - nonsmoking/king size bed etc.cm
• Integrations with work booking platforms like SAP Concur for automatic expense reporting
• Coordination with other colleagues to plan travel/accomodation
• Amenities nearby - during trip
• After work meetups coordination during travel

• Help with choosing location for travel
• Quick travel profile setup - with company prefered airlines, seat preferences, hotel preferences - nonsmoking/king size bed etc.cm
• Integrations with travel platforms like Expedia/Trip Advisor/Kayak
• Coordination with other travel partners to plan events or activities before/during vacation
• Sharing and collaborating of trip pictures
• Amenities and activities nearby - during trip
• Money sharing and settling during the trip

 

1. Clarify Business objective - A social travel product would mean an app meant for users to discuss travel related topics and experiences such as destinations, itineraries, Q & A, suggestions, etc. The goal is to give people the power to build a community focused 

 

            Additional Clarification - Will this website enable sharing of travel info among communities, or will it also enable travel bookings.

• Lets assume the former to begin with (bolded)

• Will it be within facebook, or a separate app? - I would prefer to create a standalone app dedicated for travel topics. I would like to attract customers ranging from serious to casual travellers. Integrating with the mainstream facebook app will distract the user on other topics. A successful product should achieve the following -

       i. Usefulness

       Ii. Understandability of the purpose

       Iii. Efficiency

       Iv. UX- reduce clutter

       v.  Communicative

       Vi. Scalability

• We will launch the product as mobile UI 

       

 

2. User segments-  Broadly, I would categorize my end users as all users regardless of age. Further categorize-

• Users seeking advice on travel. 

• Family (with kids)

• Group of friends

•  Single traveller 

• Couples                    

• Users that are experienced travellers giving travel advice

• Users looking to trade their vacation packages (if unused, change of plans, low scale monetization)

     

3. User needs- 

     User workflow - 

User onboarding → uses facebook signon → answers travel related questions (KYU) → connect with friends → perform activities on timeline → log out 

1. Create a profile 

2. To improve their experience and maximize benefits from the site, user would like to share information such as travel interests, places travelled so far, pictures, videos etc

3. User would like to establish meaningful connections with community that shares similar interests and passion for travel

4. Ability to connect with smaller groups 

5. User would like to see recent activity

6. Ability to like, comment, share, - respond to posts, videos, pictures 

7. I would like to customize the settings of my account , ex: privacy, who can see profile, etc

8. A user is not certain if a certain content is authentic. 

 

Prioritize - 1,3,5,6, also 2 since it is low effort and high CX impact

 

4. Solutions- 

1. Enable single sign on using facebook credentials, include a questionnaire as part of the signon process.

2. Establish connections with friends/acquaintances using facebook/whatsapp/instagram directory.

3. Ability to set account preferences.

4. Create a newsfeed portal to be able to view relevant activity from the community. 

5. Ability to take action on specific posts/ vidoes/ comments/ photos - such as like, love, share, comment 

6. Prior to the content being posted externally, it is being reviewed by FB teams. 

7. Use ML, behavioural analytics to recommend like minded groups/ connections or travel destinations

 

            Prioritize -

             I would like to prioritize 1,2,3,4,5 due to high cx impact 

 

   Success metrics -

1. Adoption rate -  DAU, MAU, Time on page

2. # of page visits/ day

3. # of posts, followed by likes, comments 

4. Qualitative customer feedback