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Stories are a quick and engaging way to see what your friends are upto, share updates and get reactions from. The fact that stories play sequentially one after the other, makes it even more engaging.
Stories became popular within Instagram, Whatsapp, and so Facebook also started it. I am unsure so as to whether Instagram had stories before it got acquired by Facebook or not. But anyways, now that we know, why stories are popular, and loved by users, let's talk about how facebook can improve it.
Assumptions (interviewer should be prompted to negate any of the assumptions):
1. Mobile devices are more accessible, available, and so we will prioritize mobiles over desktop for this.
2. We can improve:
a) activation of stories i.e. ensuring more existing facebook users create atleast one story,
b) engagement of stories i.e increase number of stories created by a user in a specific timeframe (let's assume a day)
c) or increase the number of users that create atleast 1 story in a day.
Hypothetically, let's say there are 100 users, 50 of them have never created a story, 25 of them have created a story atleast once and 25 of them create stories regularly. I would prioritize first segment and focus on increasing activation of stories i.e. ensuring more existing facebook users create atleast one story, with the assumption that once they kick-start creating stories, they will be more engaged and it will lead to increase in number of stories per user.
3. Let's look the user segments.
1. Power users: use Facebook very frequently, are engaged, and are familiar with new features, able to try new features themselves and advocate the use to others.
2. Active users: fair usage of Facebook, less as compared to power users but significant enough. Have used all features atleast once.
3. Passive users: not active users of Facebook. Comfortable with the limited feature set. Do not explore much. Needs external push or nudge to try on new things.
For the improvement metrics I have identified, I would pick passive users as the target segment. Let's assume, users who have not yet created a single story predominantly belong to this user segment. Such users may have come across other people's stories, but are not encouraged enough to create their own stories.
Let's look at the needs and challenges of this user group, and try to figure out why they may not have created a story yet
1. They don't know what Facebook stories are? Not aware.
2. They have seen stories, but don't know how to create one.
3. They are afraid that they will not create a good story. What if no one likes it? Overly thinking before trying it.
4. They are not motivated enough to create a story. Doesn't see any benefit. Why bother?
While all of them would need solving for, the most important problem to solve for is 2, Increasing awareness and guiding/helping users to create stories for first time users. Let's explore solutions to these problems.
Problem #1: They have seen stories, but don't know how to create one.
1. Show ads in between the stories: when users are browsing through other people's stories, show add promoting stories and quick 15-second videos on how to create stories, which a quick "create story" CTA.
2. Quick guide: when users get to "create story", show a quick guide of most common and enagaging features of a story, like filters, music and stickers. Guide the users through guided tour, and prompt them to publish the story at the end. Also show them how they can track engagement on their story, like who viewed, comments/likes on it, etc.
3. Share a new post as story: when users are creating a new post, or a note on their timelines, prompt the users to share it as a story too.
4. Pre-create a story: take an older post and pre-create a story for such users, put in drafts, and encourage them to publish it. This pre-created story will have some music, and filters and users should be allowed to change it. This pre-created story can be found by users on the homepage of facebook in "draft" state.
None of the above are high effort features and would require small to medium effort to solve the problem.
In order to measure success of the above, along with the primary metric, we should also measure:
Primary: increase in number of new users who create stories
Secondary:
- the ratio of the number of stories created in a day to daily active users
- number of stories per user
- Number of stories per user per day
- Direct success of implemented solutions:
- Number of users sharing posts as stories.
- Number of users publishing the draft recommended story
Silver PM
Improve FB stories: FB stories are posts that last 24 hours. They are accessed on mobile devices re: in somewhat of a carousel next to reels and FB play. As the newsfeed has migrated to more sponsored content, group updates, stories is a way for FB friends to engage with each other in a more dynamic manner. FB stories seem to encourage spontaneity/ fun/multi-media posts. Instea of being word-heavy, the user has option of sharing photos/videos and easily attaching audio to the posts.
Clarifying Questions?
Improve how ?
Are you looking to increase engagement in FB stories? Adoption of FB stories? FB shares?
Customer Segmentation:
Power users:
Marketers:
Younger users
Mature users:
Younger users:
This category most likely have a instagram/tic toc or another app that uses a similar format. They would likely be early adaptors to FB stories if they are still active on FB. They would seemingly like the 24 hour rule as the posts would not linger.
This may be a good strategic move for this category to get younger users more active on FB as They have been migrating away from the platform and opting for Instagram/tic toc, etc.
One advantage of those other apps is the huge carrot of going viral, not sure if stories allows for that considering the 24 hr rule.
Power Users: These are users with large friends base.
They may be celebrities, social media influencers, etc.
They would be early adaptors of FB stories -- as they could distribute short-form video to their friends (fan base)
They would not have a difficult time figuring out how to user the feature.
24 hour rule would be an issue.
Marketers:
Individuals, companies, using this tool to get their products in front of potential customers.
For these users, ease of use should not be a problem.
The 24 hr time limit might be problematic as it would require them to continue to update their stories.
The shortened form would require that they ge their messaging precise.
Users who have used FB for years and have traditionally used their newsfeed to engage with friends.
They are likely dissatisfied with newsfeed as it has gotten a little cluttered with groups, ads, etc. And it is no longer dynamic.
These users might be a little intimidated by this feature. As other than the 24 hour rule, we don’t really explain why this is different from a traditional post. They feel as if they should only post a story if they have something special to post as they would trad. Use their newsfeed to post status.
They may think it needs to be video and not just pics.
They may also want to use words as opposed to just videos. But Stories is intentionally designed similar to Instagram for pics and videos.
Its easy to get back your your story but not necessarily that easy to get to a specific friends story.
There are limited engagement options for stories. One of the better features for many FB users are the notifications you receive when someone likes your post or comments on your posts.
Potential solutions.
Keep it simple but allow the user some flexibility.
Save is an option but how often do users go back into view saved stories. Perhaps the user can have a library of saved stories with some metrics on likes, shares… Here are your most liked stories? (This will increase that user’s investment in stories.)
If the user clicks on reels/watch/video. A prompt do you want to see a similar story for your friend?
Currently, it appears th order of stories are somewhat random.
Introduce an internal recommendation engine geared towards showing stories that may be more entertaining for that specific user.
Themed stories: Prompt user to post, upon a significant even such as a vacation, holiday, birthday or life event. (this would boost engagement between FB and the user)
Keep the default simple (as is?) But offer ability edit, GIF or meme-fy stories. Stories presents as a slide show. So some additional editing functionality might make it more fun to interact with.
Judging by the people who viewed notification, stories are not being clicked upon that frequently so my assumption is there may be a.) discoverability or b.) navigation issue.
News feed is passive, you do not have to look for post as they just show up on your feed.
So upon clickof stories, we could think of autoplay into friends stories.
So in addition to the slide show. I might look to prioritizee stories based upon peer to peer engagement.
There are many avenues for paid advertisement but as stories are new to FB I would really try to align it more closely on engagement.
We also need to make a better distinction between news feed and stories. It’s not clear to the user that FB is offering this option because of a decline in engagement within status updates to to solve for a cluttered newsfeed. Most users are simply mildly annoyed when there does not appear to be ways for them to engage with their friends via news feed.
Upon posting of several photos for instance on the user’s news feed, group those photos together in a slide show and ask the user if they want to post this story. Then allow the user to choose audio. We could also add in a bit of AI to suggest type of audio. For instance, user posts picks of their dogs, one promp could be “who let the dogs out?
Some users not accustomed with stories may feel somewhat intimidated/restricted by the new format.
It has an intentional design. But if you have a user who is viewing stories but has not created one. Perhaps we randomly take a post photo/add music and ask the user if they want to post to stories.
There appears to be less of a reward for posting stories. This will change as more users adapt to stories and get accustomed to the new feature. But until that critical mass is reached.
Mimic newsfeed notifications.
Make it easier to share friends stories or prominent reels within the stories carousel.
It should not have to be original content -- allow users to post viral videos etc.
Ability to share to different audiences if the user chooses.
Ability to share publicly if the user chooses. Provide a means for stories to become viral.
Memorialize it, if the user chooses to save, so the user can re-share at a later time.
Prioritization formula: RICE
Reach | Imact | Confidence | Effort | Score | |
Boost adoption. Allow user to meme-ify or create GIFs from stories. | 5 | 4 | 100 | 3 | 666 |
Provide users who have not posted to stories a sample story/ ask them if they want to post? | 3 | 3 | 100 | 3 | 333 |
Ability to post publicly shared videos via stories. | 4 | 4 | 100 | 3 | 533 |
Ability to segment stories/choose specific audiences to share with. | 5 | 4 | 100 | 5 | 400 |
User investment into stories. Provide some AI implementation to prioritize more popular stories/stories from peers that user engages with more frequently | 5 | 4 | 100 | 5 | 400 |
Autoplay stories upon click of stories | 5 | 3 | 100 | 2 | 750 |
Goals | Signals | Metrics | |
Happiness | User post a story. Sees their friends like their story and feels happy. | User returns to their story. User post additional stories. User view stories by their friends. | No. of stories per day. No stories per user. No. of stories viewed by user/posted by user. Types of stories posted? Pics v. video v. public stories. |
Engagement | Goal is for user to engaged with their peers on the platform Spend more time viewing posting stories. Become the primary means for content-sharing across the platform | Increase in number of stories viewed. Incr. of storiers posted. Increase in likes. Increase in comments. Increase in impressions. | Session lengths per week. Stories posted per Week. Stories viewed per week. No. of likes per story/impressions. No. comments/ipressions |
Adoption | Goal is to become primary means in which users share content on the paltform | Stories viewed. No of likes by user. No. of comments by user No. of stories created. Story creation v. news feed posts. No of active users. Video uploaded to FB/ No. of pics uploaded | Stories viewed. No of likes by user. No. of comments by user No. of stories created. Story creation v. news feed posts. No of active users. Video uploaded to FB/ No. of pics uploaded |
Retention | Get the user invested in the tool, bring them back to FB to see reactions to stories, view more stories, post more stories. | No. of repeat visits to stories. No of active users/ change in active users. Change in active daily/monthly users. New acct. Creation No. of deactivated accounts -- | No. of repeat visits to stories. No of active users/ change in active users. Change in active daily/monthly users. New acct. Creation No. of deactivated accounts -- |
Task Completion/Ease | Minimal no. of steps to create story/ immediate notification to user once a story has been viewed. | Steps to create story. Steps added by new features. Abandonment rate. | No of steps to create a story. |
Based upon the above RICE chart, I would focus on the easy wins as the effor to introduce auto-play, ability to meme-ify and create GIFs out of stories would be daily low and the reach would be high. The impact however if moderate.
More complicated is introducing AI as well as changing how the user post, customizing an audience, etc. I would not leave that out but the design of this should be carefully considered as you might make it to cumbersome for the user. The beauty of stories in its present form. Is that you can posts multi-media posts in three steps. So that is one trade-off to consider, customization will take away from this ease of use.
Recommendation engine may take some additional work. I would suggest it be done on the back end so the content is simply prioritize on the carousel. ua.)popular content b.)newest content c.) content shared by peers they frequently interact with. d.) Content similar to content the user typically posts.
Another trade-off is the reduction in posts on the news feed. If the adoption of stories increases, content shared via other means will decline. What impact will that have on the news feed? Is that intentional?
In summary, I would work in parallel to make posting a story (video/pics with audio) more fun.
Would allow the user to choose some posts to share publicly as well as other posts to share w/ certain users.
Ability to share stories that were not created by the user -- viral stories.
Prioritize viral stories as well as stories created by influences and friends as opposed to marketers.
Introduce some AI to some stories for the users i.e., following a birthday, life event, etc.
I think this would boost both adoption and engagement on FB. It may also increase retention as stories is fairly similar to Instagram
Platinum PM
Approach:
1. Understand the prompt better
2. Establish the business goal
3. Identify the user segments and prioritize the user segment
4. Identify the user pain points and solution
5. Prioritize the user solution
Clarification questions:
My understanding is that facebook stories is the place where users can share interesting life moments with their friends network and it stays for 24 hours. Other users comment on the stories will be sent to the creators of the stories.
Candidate: Does the scope include only US or WW; only app or both desktop and app.
Interviewer: WW, both desktop and app
Candidate: Can the recommended improvements include hardware components to it
Interviewer: Yes
Candidate: Is the goal to increase the engagement and user satisfaction and thereby increase the ad revenue
Interviewer: Yes
Business goal: Increase user engagement
User segments:
A) Individuals that create stories
B) Individuals that consume stories
C) Businesses that create stories
D) Businesses that consume stories
In order to drive the adoption of the facebook stories, we need to help the creators by solving their pain points. Without creators, facebook stories cannot work.
Given that individuals form the largest group and they come in various shapes, sizes and forms, I would prioritize them for the maximum impact.
Pain points:
A) Creators are constrained by the input methods such as desktop UI or app UI to post stories; they are unable to use ambient computing or wearable devices to post stories
Solution: Integrate facebook with ambient computers such as alexa, google home as well as with wearables such as google glasses, fitbit; that way creator can craete stories using these additional channels; it makes it easy for the creators to share stories
Effort: High, need to develop a new technology to integrate facebook with other hardward devices
Impact: High, create more channels for users to engage with facebook
B) Creators are unable to decide the video content length in the stories
Solution: Allow the option to creator to create video of any length in their stories
Effort: Moderate, need to scale the capacity of the storage systems
Impact: High, users can unleash their creativity and express themselves more freely
C) Creators cannot edit the stories once posted
Solution: Allow the creator to edit their stories online, without having them to delete and re-post the story
Effort: Moderate, need to integrate the editing tools with stories feature
Impact: High, saves time for creator as they can edit their stories on the fly
D) Creators are cannot easily control the dissemination of their stories with the audience
Solution: Allow the creators to easily share the stories with specific sub-group in their friends list using some attributes such as friends from school, college, workpalce, etc, rather than having to include/exclude them one by one
Effort: Moderate. Need to make intelligent suggestions when users to control the access to the select group
Impact: High; it goes a long way to meet the privacy needs of the users that users would be more forthcoming to create and share stories
E) Creators cannot store their stories for future use
Solution: Allow the creators to archive selected stories that they can re-use in the future
Effort: low, need to just use the cloud storage systems to archive the stories
Impact: High, saves times for creator to re-edit and repurpose their past stories
Prioritization
If I were to prioritize one solution, it is creating additional channels for facebook stories through ambient computing and wearable devices.
PM
Note: treating this question as if asked during a one-on-one interview and not home assignment, meaning not a lot of time for research and too much detail.
1. Talk about company & Product goals to ensure alignment with interviewer:
Company goal: Bring the world closer together.
Product goal: increase engagement in the platform, focusing on photos/videos and mobile - which are 2 things FB puts great emphasis on in all of its products. There is also a monetization aspect when considering story ads.
For the sake of focus, I will be coming up with ways to increase user engagement with this product and not consider revenue as a goal (make sure this is OK with interviewer).
2. Detail use cases and user types - including their needs and pain points.
Use cases - private users and brands are two main groups that use FB stories. Seeing as brands goals are to increase revenue and we are not focusing on that, I will be focusing on private users as the selected user segment for my answer.
For additional focus, I will narrow down the user segment to include only tech-savvy users who know how to create, view and react to stories.
User needs (described as user stories):
"I want to share things that interest me with my friends quickly and easily."
"I want to see what my friends are up to to stay updated and feel connected."/ "I want to see more interesting content that appeals to me."
Pain points for those users can be: not enough people seeing their stories in the FB platform, or the content they are seeing isn't relevant enough for them (considering that FB is now 'a platform my parents are on' as basis).
3. Suggesting features based on those users pain points and needs, and prioritising them.
- Stories in Groups - Users want to see relevant content that appeals to them. FB's algorithms help do just that, but using FB's forte which is groups can help that even more. For example, a user that is intersted in knitting might not have friends with that same hobby, but seeing stories in a knitting group would be very interesting to him and increase his enjoyment and emgagement with the platform.
- Longer Stories - enabling stories to be live for up to 3 days, for example. It might be against the basic concept of stories which are ususally 24 hrs, but it can help more users see their friends' stories, especially if they're not logging into social media daily.
- Special Holiday filters - a 'delight' feature that can increase user satisfaction with the platform - creating unique and interactive filter designs that are released at time when users are more likely to share on social media. For example, a Hanukka filter where AI adds menorah hat on the user's head, and the user can control how many candles are 'lit' to correspond with the days of the holiday. The same can be done with special advent calendar filters for Christmas.
- average # of stories per day per group
- % of users in groups engaging with stories (viewing, reacting, commenting)
- % increase of uploading stories for each user (this will measure if people who previously have not used stories 'in public' are now using them in groups - this will indicate relevance to users)
Bronze PM
About the Feature:
Facebook Stories is a feature with which users can share temporary images and videos with their social network. This content gets automatically deleted after 24 hours, which allows the user to post trivial content more frequently without spamming their social media profiles with the same.
Clarifying Questions & Goal Setting:
(Usually in an interview, I would ask clarifying questions about what aspect of Facebook stories does the interviewer want to improve, like increase interaction and have more users post stories on social media, increase ad revenue, increase retention, etc. As this is not an interview, I am going to choose an area of improvement of my own)
Here, I am going to focus on improving the amount of interaction of users with Facebook Stories, i.e. get more and more users to post stories on Facebook.
Division of User Group:
Starting from identifying the customers, I can divide the users of Facebook who can post stories into the following categories:
1) Normal People, who are just browsing Facebook to check up on their friends and other things
2) Pages, operated to engage with people who have interested in the theme of the respective page (memes, anime fan clubs, etc.)
3) Brands, who operate their handles to engage with the people for advertising
Of these, as I relate with Type 1 the most, I would like to consider their case and try to improve Facebook Stories for them.
Pain Points of User:
For a Normal User, I can think of the following pain points where Facebook Stories can improve upon:
1) Given that the number of friends and pages being followed by a normal user on Facebook is way more than Instagram or even Snapchat, the sheer amount of stories to see is huge in number. This, in turn, baffles the user which demotivates him/her to check out all the stories.
2) Facebook Stories are usually available to the entire friends' list of a user, which demotivates the user to post relatively private content which they are not comfortable sharing with everyone. Given the development of the size of one's Facebook social circle, it would prove to be a big hassle for users to sort friends with whom they might be interested in sharing stories with, and hiding everyone else.
3) Most of the stories are by brands and Facebook pages which might prove to be unimportant for the user leading to fewer clicks & lesser interaction.
4) Unlike Instagram, Facebook is as popular on laptops and PCs as on mobiles. However, Stories being only a mobile-friendly feature does not go well with non-mobile users.
Prioritization of Pain Points:
To prioritize these pain points, I would like to score each pain point based on the number of users it caters to and how much the problem bothers the user.
| Point | Who faces this problem the most? | Reach Score (/10) | How much does it hinder our goal? Score(/10) | Priority & Total Score |
| 1 | People who have a big social network-> Users who have been on Facebook for roughly more than 5 years | 7/10 | 4/10 | 4 (28) |
| 2 | People with low posting frequency on Facebook | 8/10 | 7/10 | 1 (56) |
| 3 | People who follow a lot of brands and pages | 6/10 | 5/10 | 3 (30) |
| 4 | Laptop & PC Users | 5/10 | 9/10 | 2 (45) |
I would like to focus on the top 2 problems:
A) User getting demotivated to put stories due to huge amount of viewer he/she might be uncomfortable sharing it with
B) Stories not being Laptop and Mobile Friendly
Solution for Problem A:
Add a "Friends Circle" feature, similar to close friends feature on Instagram. Facebook can predict the people included in this list from the user's Instagram followers, to save the hassle to scroll and add each user separately.
Limitations:
-> High amount of effort required to build an accurate prediction model for a user's close friends circle
-> Possible retaliation from users over data protection and privacy
Solution for Problem B:
1) Add similar gestures for a mouse as used in mobiles: click and hold for pause, click on the right side to shift the story, click anywhere outside the story to exit from story viewer, etc.
2) Story sorter to sort stories into stories by friends and personal users vs stories by pages, influencers, etc. to avoid endless scrolling.
Among these 2, I would like to focus on solution 1 more as adding computer-friendly gestures would surely help increase the traction of Facebook Stories among non-mobile users.
Conclusion:
To conclude, in order to increase the interaction of personal users with Facebook Stories and increase their posting frequency, the following measures can be taken:
-> Introduce sophisticated sorting feature to show stories only to certain close people, for users who are uncomfortable with sharing content with everyone
-> Make Facebook Stories computer-friendly by adding specific gestures
Clarifying question: Stories feature is the one on the very top where you can post a content and it will disappear in 24 hours. Are we focusing on mobile or desktop? I will focus on mobile so that way we can look at both viewer's and creator's point of view.
Goal: Is to bring people closer together by sharing a part of their life and viewing story of others no matter how far they are at.
Users:
1. Creators
- Normal users - majority of stories creators who are using it to share a part of their lives through pictures, videos, sharing posts etc.
- Content creators - users that are part of a media handle who creates stories professionally.
- Advertisers - Brands/companies that uses stories as a advertising channel.
- Users who views FB stories.
FB stories allows users to share videos and pictures of user generated content. that can be viewed upto two times and will disappear after 24 hours. This product is built around in app camera that allows users to add fun filters as well as geo location filter. They appear at the top of the feed and users can tap on image of users and get access to it. Users can also reply with a direct message. Users can also choose to share the story on newsfeed which wont disappear unless the user chooses to delete this. Users can also choose to view all the stories on top of their feed. user journey would look like
1) access the camera on FB by swiping right or click on your story circle on top on the feed
2) record video/ take pics
3) create story and tap send button to share this with your network
Clarify the scope of the question
Does improving means increasing engagement?
Does driving engagement means making it more easy to create and consume user generated content?
Background : FB saw a huge decline in people generating user generated content such as status/ images and instead sharing news and other random links sharing has increased. FB stories was a feature that was introduced to make user generated content fun and engaging. The daily # of FB stories are approx 150MM. Historically, sharing of user generated content has shifted to smaller networks like snapchat, instagram and whatsapp etc. FB stories allows to bring this feature to 2B users who have never been exposed to ephemeral content.
what problem is this solving?
Stories was also able to solve a problem where users expect content from friends and family such as status updated, photos, videos etc. but their feed was filled with non user generated content which was not a great experience.
Choose a metric
Possible metrics to consider for engagement
– active users of stories daily : 100 M ( assumption)
– number of stories created per day is 150M
– number of stories consumed daily ( say 100M )
– average number of stories created/ active user : 1.5
– average number of stories consumed/ active user :1
– increase adoption of stories for new users
for this exercise we will focus on increase adoption of stories for new users . The reasoning behind choosing this metric is making it easy for new users to try this feature and this will increase usage of app > increase consumption of stories due to user generated content(we know this drives engagement)> aligns with FB’s mission of connecting people> aligns with news-feed values of make it more engaging> will drive ad revenue because it is better content and provide value to advertisers.
List the user groups and select yours
– power users: these are heavy users that post 25 stories(assumption) per day and spend 2 hours on the app over 24 hours
– regular users: this is your mean user and are users for this feature and post 1 story a day and spend 35 mins over 24 hours
– occasional users: they users dont interact with the story feature and spend 25 mins over 1 week time period.
for this exercise we will choose occasional user who has never used story feature.
user pain points
– user is unable to find meaningful content because the feed is filled with non user generated content
– user doesnt know how to create stories
why doesnt the user know how to create a story?
is this due to lack of understanding this feature
is the value not clear to the user
user doesnt understand the steps clearly
user has never tried this feature
We will focus on taking meaningful actions on the app on an on going basis to drive engagement.
list of solutions
user journey : occasional user uses this app few times in a given week. they open the app and start scrolling immediately to get access to latest news. other content.
step 1 build a new feature on boarding
prompting list of activities that users can do similar to how quora prompts on right side of the screen. linkedin also focuses on profile completeness as a way to drive people to perform specific action.
a) create a simple prompt that pauses the user feed and ask them to take a look at the story feature and how it works video/ UX flow . it should be natural and not appear to be a separate product.
b) show them stories that their connections have created to help them see how cool it is
c) reinforce the fact that stories will disappear within 24 hours ( maybe this is not important to the user) and ease of creation
d) walk them thru a step by step story creation with the option of skipping/ closing this UX.
2) create a feedback loop if a user takes action, reward such a virtual balloons can be an example( will rely on UX designer for this idea)
The goal is to take incremental steps to guide users discover this feature, post his first story and also help him create new stories and also use filters. make this a fun experience.
Evaluate solutions
1) solution a, b , c and d engineering cost : m UX cost : H and impact : H
2) solution 2) engineering cost: M, UX cost: H and impact: M
I believe both these need to happen to create a great UX flow.
performance metrics
identify number of first time users who tried stories
on going metrics: what % of first time users are posting more stories and see an increased engagement
ad metrics: this can also improve as these users improve their experience.
summary
I would focus on improving new user experience for fb stories and help user learn about this feature, use this feature successfully and drive both engagement and revenue metrics.
Liked by PM Exercises
1. Describe the product
Facebook’s mission is to connect people, establish and foster connections between them. Stories are a fun and spontaneous way of keeping your friends updated with what’s happening at your end. For Facebook, user generated content is extremely important. Considering the decline in sharing of status messages and the clutter in an individual’s news feed, Stories is imperative for Facebook in order to create high quality user generated content and increase engagement among users.
2. Scope of the question
Ask the interviewer if there is anything in particular we should be focusing on, otherwise carry on.
3. Metrics
Some of the metrics I feel are important are:
a) % of users creating stories and new users creating stories
b) % of followers viewing one or more stories
c) % of followers responding / reacting to a story
d) Retention among story creators (Story creators creating more stories)
e) Average session time
The metric I want to focus on is the % of people creating stories. If we can increase this, it will lead to increased adoption of stories, increased engagement, more connections and will drive Facebook’s core mission.
4. List down user groups
a) Power users – these people are already well aware of how stories work. They create stories on an ongoing basis and engage frequently with their followers through this medium
b) People who view stories and want to get started with creating stories. They have been viewing stories of other people in their network and are encouraged to try doing so themselves
c) People who view stories, but haven’t thought of creating a story
d) People who don’t view stories but spend time on the feed
I would like to focus on the 2nd category of users, i.e. those who view stories but haven’t created a story themselves
5. Some of their use cases and pain points are the following:
a) They may not now how to create a story
b) They may think it’s cumbersome to create a story
c) They may not feel comfortable sharing stories with everyone
d) They may be short of ideas for content in the story
e) They may not be aware of the benefits of creating stories
I will prioritize these use cases in the following manner (from highest to lowest)
c, d, e, a, b
6. My solutions
a. Allow a user to select whom should be able to view your story. While creating a story, I should be able to select which group of users this should go out to. If I want, I should be able to remove particular users from viewing the story. Maybe, I only want to share this story with my family or with my friends or with my work colleagues
b. I will use data to predict when one is likely to create a story. If someone has been tagged in specific types of events, ex. are on vacation / playing a sport / eating out. Based on this, I will prompt a user to create a story around that particular situation through notifications scheduled dynamically (some sort of processing will be required to not send too many)
c. I will create collateral highlighting some of the benefits of creating stories- ex. reach out to people in a personal and fun way, undivided & uncluttered attention and the number of people within my network who are sharing stories.
d. I will use data to predict who are the kind of users most likely to create stories. Some of the parameters to be considered could include age, number of followers/connections, engagement on their FB posts (likes, comments), whether the user is creating stories in other social networks owned by Facebook. To these people, I will send out periodic emails or push notifications which will also highlight the benefits of creating stories along with call to actions
e. I will create an interactive tutorial which shows how one can create a story in a stepwise manner- adding a picture, recording a video, adding titles, adding symbols or colors
7. Evaluation of solutions
a) Already is there in Facebook posts, should be easy to implement for Stories too
b) Requires analysis of past data to see if stories created were preceded by any event, such as a vacation/trip, eating out, going out for drinks, playing a sport. Based on this, we will need to model an AI solution. There will be significant user research, planning, A/B testing, UI/UX, engineering required for this. Also, too many notifications will annoy the user so we may need background jobs to send these dynamically
c) Easy to do as it involves creating of material and distributing them at the right places
d) Requires analysis of past data to see which kind of users are creating stories the most. There will be significant user research, planning, A/B testing, UI/UX, engineering required for this. Also, too many notifications will annoy the user so we may need background jobs to send these dynamically
e) UI/UX and design intensive, how it seamlessly fits in with stories, should not affect experience of others who are well versed with stories
My prioritization for these solutions from highest to lowest is a, c, e, d, b
8. Measuring performance of solutions
a) % of people using this feature out of all people creating stories
b) Conversion rate: % of people engaging (click through) with the notification, % of people creating stories after receiving this notification
c) % of people who have never created a story who viewed this collateral
d) Conversion rate: % of people engaging with the notification, % of people creating stories after receiving this notification
e) % of first time story creators who viewed the entire tutorial, % of first time users who created a story with the assistance of the tutorial
9. To summarize, we discussed Facebook stories and various segments of users and their engagement with Facebook stories. We focused on users who view stories and know about it, however have not yet created any stories. We looked into the pain points of these users such and thought about solutions which could initiate them into creating stories
Look forward to feedback on my answer. Thanks for reading!
How can you improve Facebook Stories?
Clarifying questions?
Improve Facebook stories. Do you have any particular goals, such as engagement, ad revenue, or acquiring new users?
Facebook stories are ephemeral content appearing at the top of the feeds window. Viewers can scroll and view each story.
Strategic Context:
Mission: To give people power to build the community and bring the world close together.
Product Mission: Share Events or celebrations with friends and connect with the community.
Product Goal: Improve engagement
KPI: Increase the percentage of people viewing /commenting/Sharing stories
Stakeholders: Creators, Viewers, Advertisers
Selecting creators here because quality and engaging stories create more viewers.
Segmentation
Occasional story creators: They are not frequent creators, and when events happen or they want to share, they only have particular events. 3,2,3
Celebrities/Influencers create stories regularly to keep their fans updated. 2,2,2
Small/Medium businesses share their latest products or services as their stories 2,2,1
Criteria: Market size, Underserved, Alignment to goal
Occasional Story Creators:
Journey: User event happens, create a story, and post, not following the number of viewers of the story
Lack of motivation to create a story. 3,3,2
Time and effort to create a story is painful 3,2,1,
Poor feedback from previous stories because of the quality of content 3,2,2
Prioritization criteria: Intensity, Frequency, and ability to solve
Lack of motivation to create a story:
Solutions:
Feed-quality stories of others in the timeline show how many viewers were reached and provide a Facebook badge if the story reaches the threshold of, say, 100 views. 2,2,2
Create AI stories from the creators' events, memories, or interests and provide diting options and suggestions for posting them after the posting, provide detailed viewership report, ask for the poll, automatically tagging to reach, and most liked comments to increase engagement. 3,2,3
Provide a step-by-step tool for the creator to provide content in their mind or suggestions to nudge them to use creative tools to create the story and validate or enhance the story using power tools. 2,2,3
Criteria: how well does it solve the problem, Time to market effort, Differentiation
From the above, creating AI stories will improve creators' motivation to post stories with less effort, quality content, and increased engagement.
Metrics to Measure :
Percentage of increase of creating stories per user per week
Number of People viewed and engaged in a particular AI-created story to measure the impact of AI story creator per week
Gold PM
- Some calrifyin questions
- When you say Improve is there a goal or objective here?
- Yes - Engagement
- KPI/Ns metric - We will define as we go deeper in to the problem statement
- Geo - India (will that be ok ? answer - yes)
- Are there any constrains to the project
- Yes - We have limited resources
- Is there a specfic platform you want me to focus on ? - Answer - You can choose but it should not matter facebook stories exist on app/web both
- When you say Improve is there a goal or objective here?
- Mission - It being people closer to one another and build a community ( This is universal mission for all apps in meta family.
since we are not focusing on facebook ads and facebook shop i will not focus on the B2B side of the bussines while coherting the user type is that ok ?
Yes - Ok
- Type of users
| Type of users | Reach | Impact |
| Persona 1 - Users who are super active on facebook , they are young tech savy adults and prefer to share everything about thier lifes on social media , frequency of posting - High (almost everyday, or 4 to 5 times in a week). They are the Genz and Millenials | M | L |
| Persona 2 - Users who are active on facebook but would post only when it is required and they belive posting on social media should be limited and share only when there is a event or specific topic that they feel is they would want the world to know about them - They are the Genx category | M | M |
| Persona 3 - Users who hardly active on facebook and they are not tech savy and are boomers | S | S |
So just describe i would use reach and impact criteria to pick the users and i would like to focus on cohert which can bring maxium impact and and there by influencing other coherts to participate in it
Does this soud ok ? - Yes
Choose persona 1
- Pain points
| Pain points | Size | Depth |
| Mindhshare is divided - Since this category is active on social media , their attention is divided between multilple apps like snap, insta and now apps like sharechat there by constant preasure to post on all apps. | M | M |
| Lack of patience/Early boredom - They are always wanting look for new and innovative things , in absence of this they loose intrest quickly | L | L |
| Lack of time - As they are constantly enagaged with work and other activities they might not find time to post images, write captions, create a quirky post or decide on what music to choose etc | L | L |
For sake of this exercise i wil pick lack of patience and lack of time to try and find solutions for it. Also criteria i am choosing here is size of the problem and how deep the pain point is
Any comments?
So when you say lack of time - Are they not super active on social media, yes they are but they might not have time to spend on creativity anngle here , like deciding on caption or background music etc
Ya got it
Let us deep dive in to solution
I would like to use AI to design a solution
| Sol | Reach | Impact | Confidence | Effort |
| Feature 1 - Use AI to generate Captions/background music/avatar based on the image that has been chosen to post on stories | H | H | H | M |
| Feature 2 - Use AI to generate stories using LLM - Give option to users to Type - Create a birthday card for my friend ABC using images from last nights event that i celebrated with my friends and tag @abc @hyx and use a nice background image and text for my friend | H | H | H | H |
| Feature 3 - Use AI to genrate a Audio song Use LLM to generate a Rap song for a friend of mine with a nice background image talking about our friendship and how much we time we spent together in the voice of eminem as eminem is his favouite artist | H | H | H | H |
The feature 1 has mimmumal effort and it is important to consider that coz our resources are limited going from fact we clarified in the above questions
Try it for for certain % of audience, mesure adoption/engagment and than take a call if this working or not
Sucess metric /KPI
- Avg No of stories created using LLM Divided by number of likes - Per user (5stories 20 likes = 25 % convertion rate)- north star
Solution
We will use the below steps to solve the problem
1) Describe the Product which needs to be improved to have a clear understanding
2) Ask clarifying questions to narrow down the scope of the problem
3) Define the Goal that you need to achieve
4) List down the user segments and select one user segment from them for analysis
5) List the pain points for that segment
6) List the solutions to solve the pain points
7) Evaluate all the solutions and prioritize them
8) Define metrics to measure the performance of the solution
9) In the end summarise the entire answer in short
Step 1: Describe the Product
Facebook is a popular social media platform where users share part of their life with others using images, text, video etc to stay connected with family and friends.
It has multiple elements such as Market place, jobs, stories, Birthday, Groups etc. We will focus on Facebook stories only for the time being.
Facebook Stories is a pretty important feature of Facebook with which the users can share text, photos, videos, music etc with their social network. These stories are valid for 24 hours after which they disappear which allows the users to post trivial content more frequently.
Facebook stories appear as a separate section at the top of the news feed and users can tap on the stories to access them. Users can interact with the stories in multiple ways such as comments, reply or share it with other users.
Step 2: Ask clarifying questions to narrow down the scope of the problem
Me - Are we focussing on any particular platform such as Facebook mobile app or Facebook website?
Interviewer - Let's focus on the Facebook mobile app
Me- Are we focussing on any specific platform such as Android or iOS or we need to consider both Android and iOS?
Interviewer- You need to consider both Android and iOS
Me - Are we focussing on any specific geography?
Interviewer- It is up to you to decide
Me-Are we focussing on any specific user group?
Interviewer- It is up to you to decide
Me - What aspect of Facebook stories do we want to improve?
Do you have any specific goal in mind?
Improve user engagement
Increase retention
Increase user base
Increase revenue
Interviewer - It is up to you to decide. You are free to choose
In that case I will focus on increasing the user engagement
Step 3: Define the Goal you want to achieve
Facebook's mission is to bring the world closer together. I feel user engagement is something that closely aligns with the goal of Facebook
So, I will focus on increasing the engagement for the Facebook stories i.e., get more and more users to engage or interact with the Facebook stories. If we can increase the user engagement it will increase the user retention too and generate more revenue also
Step 4: List down the user segments
We will divide the users of Facebook stories into the following segments
Based on the role
Creators
They are the users who actually create the stories.
They can be further classified as follows
Individual Users: Majority of the story creators belong to this category. They are the people who want to share part of their lives with others through pictures, videos etc
Content Creators: They are the users that create stories as a part of their profession such as celebrities or social media influencers
Advertisers: They are the brands/ companies that use Facebook stories as an advertising channel in order to promote their products
Viewers
These are the users who view the stories created by the creators
Select the desired user segment
I will select the Individual user segment as my target group for the analysis. As they are very large in number and if we solve the problem of these users, it will help the other user group also
Step 5: List down the Pain Points
1.Users don't know what stories are and how to create and view them
2.Users may think that it is a big process or thing to create a story
3.Users want to post stories but don't know what to post
4.Users may not be comfortable in sharing their stories with everyone
5.Users are unable to keep the story in the feed for longer than 24 hours
6.Users are unable to share their Facebook stories on WhatsApp/ Instagram so that they don't have to reshare.
7) Users are enable to figure out how to improve their stories content so as to get more user engagement
8) Users are enable to save drafts of their stories so that they can edit them later before posting
Step 6: List down the solutions for the Pain Points
1) Identify Potential users: In this case we will use some sort of data to predict what kind of users are more likely to create stories than others. Some of the parameters to be considered are age, number of followers, engagement on Facebook posts (likes, comments) and whether the user is creating stories on other social media platforms owned by Facebook such as WhatsApp and Instagram.
Once we have identified the potential users to such users, we will send a push notification which will let them know what stories are along with the call-to-action button.
2) Interactive Tutorial
In this case we will create an interactive tutorial for the first-time users which shows them how to create a story in a detailed stepwise manner like adding a picture, recording a video, adding titles, adding colours etc
This will help the users learn how to create stories.
3) Auto story generation
In this case based on the content that the user has shared an automated curated story will be created by Facebook. Users only need to review and click on the button to post the story.
Similarly, users can also create a story from the past events also.
Along with that we can also give creative prompts to the users to create a story on certain occasions such as a friend's birthday and create a story to call it out. This can also be applicable to holidays and community events also
4) Customising viewers list
In this case we can allow the users to create custom groups who would be able to view their stories such as family, work colleagues, close friends etc
While creating stories the user should be able to select which custom group, they want to view their stories
Even users can make their stories public to increase its reach among non members
5) Improve Privacy Settings
Users can configure privacy settings as follows
Auto Post: Facebook Stories to Instagram
This will automatically post all the Facebook stories to Instagram
Stories Validity time: Users should be to configure stories validity time as per their requirement from default 24 hours to a shorter time such as 6 hours, 12 hours or longer time such as 36 hours, 48 hours
6) Provide feedback to the users: In this case we can introduce a feedback section where facebook can suggest the improvements to the users in the stories in order to get more engagement
7) Preview and edit option: In this case we can provide the user an option where they can edit the stories and see preview of the story before posting it on Facebook
Step 7: Evaluate the solutions and prioritize them
Solution 1: Identify potential users
Impact: High, Effort: High
Priority: P1
Solution 2: Interactive Tutorial
Impact: High, Effort: Medium
Priority: P2
Solution 3: Auto story generation
Impact: High, Effort: High
Priority: P3
Solution 4: Custom Viewer list
Impact: High, Effort: Medium
Priority: P4
Solution 5: Privacy Settings
Impact: Low, Effort: Low
Priority: P5
Solution 6: Provide feedback to the users
Impact: High, Effort: High
Priority: P6
Solution 7: Preview and edit option
Impact: High, Effort: High
Priority: P7
Based on the above criteria I will go with the following solutions
Identifying potential users
Auto Story generation
Step 8: Define Metrics to measure the performance
Number of users who viewed the entire tutorials
Number of stories created with the auto generate feature on daily/Weekly/Monthly basis
Average number of users creating stories using auto generate feature
Number of users creating stories after receiving the notification
Step 9: Summarise the answer
We were asked to Improve Facebook stories. We chose the goal of increasing user engagement for the Facebook mobile app. We identified various user segments and selected the Individual user segment as our target segment. We identified various user pain points and chose the pain points identifying potential users to post stories and users not sure about what to post in the stories
We proposed the solution of using data to identify the users who are more likely to create stories. Also, we can create auto generate stories based on the existing content shared by the users
Gold PM
Product Description
Facebook Story is one of the engaging feature of facebook which connects multiple facebook users together and motivates them to spend more time on facebook. The facebook user can create, view, edit and share the user story which will be active for next 24 hours on the facebook Website and App.
Clarifying the Scope of the Problem:
Shall I go with the Mobile User, Web User or both? Both
Product Goal
Ask interviewer if he has any goal in mind or you can assume your own goal? Go Ahead with your assumption
I would be looking for Increasing Engagement as a Goal
User Groups
- Power User
- Casual User
- Occasional User
I would be considering Power user for this problem
User Pain Points
- Facebook Stories gets unnoticed by their family and friends.
- Facebook Stories reply are using messager as a medium which is not very smooth way to interact on stories
Pain Point Priortization
| Impact | Business Value | |
Facebook Stories reply are using messager as a medium which is not very smooth way to interact on stories | High | High |
Facebook Stories gets unnoticed by their family and friends. | High | High |
Solutions
- Providing the option to tag the families and friends which inturn gets notified by either through messanger messages, app notification or email.
- Providing the Facebook users the option to have live chat on the stories for better engagement.
- Providing the Facebook users the option to send the audio messages on the stories for better engagement.
| Business Value | Complexity | Development Effort | |
Providing the option to tag the families and friends which inturn gets notified by either through messanger messages, app notification or email. | High | Low | Low |
Providing the Facebook users the option to have live chat on the stories for better engagement. | High | Medium | Medium |
Providing the Facebook users the option to send the audio messages on the stories for better engagement. | High | Medium | Medium |
- Average # of users using the Live Chat feature vs Average # of users using the messenger
- Average # of users using the Audio Messages feature.
- Growth Rate of Story Viewers on a weekly basis.
- Growth Rate of LIve Chat Feature users on a weekly basis.
- Growth Rate of Audio Messages Viewer on a weekly basis.
PM
Here's how I'd attempt to improve the Facebook Stories feature.
1. Description of the feature
Facebook Story features lets users post text, images, or video content on their profile for a period of 24 Hours.
- User can upload their own story or view another user's uploaded stories
- This feature is available across platforms such as mobile native, desktop web, and mobile web.
2. Clarifying the scope of the question
Let's define what do we mean by improvement? Does it refer to more usage, revenue, or something else?
Also, is there a particular platform to choose for improvement? - Mobile native, mobile web, or desktop web?
Assumptions:
Improvement = More Usage
Target Platform = Mobile App
3. Goal
To increase the engagement of stories feature.
Engagement = Users uploading and viewing other users' stories.
4. User groups and its selection
● Power User:
- Checks Facebook multiple times a day and uses the story feature frequently.
- Updates stories on a daily basis and is aggressive on putting stories when out for some event.
- Engages with other users’ stories by reacting or commenting on them. - Usually tech-savvy school-going kids, college students, or young professionals who are comfortable sharing their life.
● Casual User:
- Checks facebook once or twice a day and hardly uses the story feature. - Doesn’t use social media much, and uploads stories only occasionally on events and outings.
- Senior professional who is not that tech-savvy and does not want to share personal life information.
● Occasional User:
- Least active on Facebook.
- Usually elderly people or less tech-savvy
5. Use cases/pain points
If we were to list pain points of type 2, i.e Casual Users, here are a few items that come to my mind.
1. They probably do not know what to post, they may be out of content.
2. They do not have time to use social media and post stories.
3. They do not know the benefit of putting stories.
4. They do not get time to upload stories on a daily basis.
5. They forget to upload stories because of their busy schedule.
6. They feel shy sharing personal life with other users
6. Listing solutions
1. Send periodic notifications on various ideas for creating content for stories.
2. Based on data on app usage, we can figure out when the user has leisure time so that we can send a notification reminding the user to put stories or check stories.
3. Educate users on the benefits of posting stories, how their reach can increase, and how they can find new friends, this can be implemented by showing the user a video tutorial when the user logs in.
4. Notify the user when other users from the same organization upload the story.
5. Allow the user to select the users who can view the stories by allowing user to make multiple categories of friends, for example, the user can categorize office friends, family, and school friends.
6. Show stories on the priority of brands; promotions and discounts, and who the user likes or engages with.
7. Show stories on the priority of users who are close friends, happen to engage more, and chat more with them.
7. Evaluating and prioritizing solutions
1. Already Facebook sends notifications to users for different activities, which should be easy to implement.
2. Requires analysis of past data to check the leisure time of the user, based on this data, custom notifications can be sent.
3. This can be implemented by showing tutorials in form of videos posts in the user’s feed showing the user benefits of using the story feature, if the user has never the used story feature, an unskippable “how-to” tutorial can be shown upon login. This will require data to check if the user has ever used the story feature.
4. This is similar to sending a normal notification with minor tweaks, it should be easily implementable as we have a notification feature already in place.
5. There will be significant research, planning, A/B testing, UI/UX, and engineering required for this.
6. There will be significant research, planning, A/B testing, UI/UX, engineering, and analysis of previous data will be required for this.
7. There will be significant research, planning, A/B testing, UI/UX, engineering, and analysis of previous data will be required for this.
Prioritization
Solution | Effort | Impact | Priority |
S1 | Low | Low | P2 |
S2 | Medium | High | P1 |
S3 | Low | Medium | P1 |
S4 | Low | Medium | P1 |
S5 | High | High | P3 |
S6 | High | High | P3 |
S7 | High | High | P3 |
Note: Effort is rated based on technical complexity and duration.
8. Metrics for measuring the performance of solutions
1. - % of users opening these notifications, % of users opening these notifications and creating stories or watching other users’ stories.
2. - % of users opening these notifications, % of users opening these notifications and creating stories or watching other users’ stories.
3. - % of users clicking on the video, % of users creating stories or watching stories are watching the video.
4. - % of users opening these notifications, % of users opening these notifications and creating stories or watching other users’ stories
5. - % of users creating stories and watching other users' stories before and after the update.
6. - % of users creating stories and watching other users' stories before and after the update.
7. - % of users creating stories and watching other users' stories before and after the update
9. Summary
To summarize, we have successfully found the goal of this improvement, i.e to improve engagement on the stories feature. We also discussed various segments of users and their engagements with the story feature. We focused on users who are casual users, who seem to use the feature once a day to two. We looked into the pain points of these users and proposed solutions that could initiate them into using(view or upload) the story feature.
Step 1 Clarify:
Can you help me understand the reason for this exercise to improve do we see something down engagement or Revenue?
What metric prompted this thought?
Have we identified any part of the user journey to see what needs to be improved or looked at
Step 2 Analyze and Deep Dive Into 1 /2/3 features :
Facebook Stories :
Device Based Activity Windows / IOS / Android Check user behavior # of Stories created, viewed and Time Spent on FB Stories
Age Group Activity: Customer Segmentation of above Metrics
Deep Dive into Funnel for FB story creation:
From the time a person starts to create a Story, adds filter, chooses aesthetics of the story to the time it is pushed to their profile.
Let's dive deep into each aspect
Do they see any lag in opening a functionality to create a story;
Do they have necessary features available, color, text, stickers etc to add to their story and publish
Step 3 Prioritize:
Out of the above I would Prioritize Funnel Analysis for Posting FB Stories: Where do we lose Engagement or content creation for FB stories .While doing that I would also track Time Spent, DAU to understand if people are coming on the app how frequently and what makes them come to post a story but end up not posting it
Step 4 Define Success Metric: if we see Conversion rate for people coming to create a story saving a draft and end up posting we ll see an improvement in FB stories; Number of Drafts being created goes down
PM
Claarifying questions:
- Goal to inprove stories is to drive engagement
- Stories definition: Full screen ephimeral photos & videos
- Stories are a quick way to capture and share a moment with our friends. Because NF is not ephimeral, users find the content should be "worth sharing"..curated, edited. For spontaneous, in the moment acitcvity stories make a great format and people love using it
- With pandemic and the need of social distancing ther eis a growing need to share small moments from our daaily lives with the people we know, near and far. (blub about how this ties to the mission of building community by connecting people)
- Competitively there are now a number of apps that let users share these - Snapchat, TikTok, Insta come to mind. However FB has knowledge of my friend network the best (close and extended) and it can offer something unique and compelling for users over its competition
Customer segments (people who use stories):
- People connecting with their close friends and family
- People connecting with their broader FB network
- People connecting with interest based groups/communities on FB (eg: school group, parenting, photography etc)
Prioritize based on impact to goal and mkt size
User needs
- Quick easy way to get/express response
- Ask recommendation or feedback
- Seek validation, encouragement on your own area of interest
- Native features ( rate, vote, ask questions etc)
- Different format of a story - that requires users to respond via another story
- Allow group memebers to build collection of stories to collect rating/reviews on topics/items
I will start by describing the product
Why people use facebook stories
- - Share their activities instantly with friends in the form of a story
- - View their friends activities
Basically, people want to share their life stories with all their friends to view. Posting something on my wall can be missed in someones news feed but stories are highlighted and difficult to miss.
I will then use Design Thinking Framework to narrow down the aspects I want to improve
Emapathise, define and ideate. The other three steps are more practical and can help in a feedback loop. In the interview I can share metrics that can be used to test the success of this improvement.
After this I will prioritize the solutions and pick the top two to improve
Starting with the Empathize phase:
Questions to ask in empathy phase in the form of a questionnaire
1. Do you know about FB stories
2. How often do you use it?
3. Is it easy to use?
4. What do you use it for?
5. Share your experience with this feature
6. What more do you want from this feature
Float a questionnaire/ feedback form to all FB users
Collate users responses and gather the pain points as missing features that can be added to improve user experience. In the interview since this proactical step is not possible, I can pose as a user and share my pain points.
Problems users face (I can add my problems as a user)
- - I need to open the app and upload photos from my device
- - If there are multiple stories then my story can be missed by my friend
- - I cannot skim through each photo in my friend’s story quickly. I need to wait for a set amount of time for each story
- - Once I view a story then I cannot view it again
Ideas/ solutions
- - Allow users to skip certain parts in a story
- - Segregate viewed and unviewed stories in case users want to go back to their already viewed story
- - Integrate stories with android or ios photo library – 1 click share
Prioritise stories based on ease of implementation and feasibility. Also implement those that have been called out most by people as something missing. I will prioritize as below.
- - Segregate viewed and unviewed stories in case users want to go back to their already viewed story - since this data is already available with FB and just needs to be reorganised
- - Allow users to skip certain parts in a story - enhancement to already existing functionality
- - Integrate stories with android or ios photo library – 1 click share - would need external app integration and more research on how many users would use this and when they would use it.
Metrics
- no of active users using these feature
- no of users that consume stories using these features
- no of users that post stories using this feature
- percentage increase in usage of stories after new features were added
- no of users who did not post/view stories started using it because of new features
Start by giving an overview of Facebook stories. A summary is to make sure that there are no knowledge gaps between you and the interviewer regarding understanding the feature. Facebooks "stories" is a feature that allows users to share photos/videos with their friends and followers. These "stories" expire after 24hrs, but users can revisit them later and share old stories or archived stories. Users can use creative camera angles, filters and even add music to their stories. Friends and followers can react to "stories" published by a user.
Ask the interviewer what was the goal of "stories" when launched?
If the interviewer provides this detail - great, and if not, give the best-educated goal for the feature.
As far as I remember "stories" feature launch was a competitive play against Snapchat, also had a similar feature. Is it fair to assume that we have satisfied the competitive threat, we want to use this feature ("stories") to increase engagement?
Confirm with the interviewer if the engagement goal is suitable for this exercise. Also, confirm if we want to tackle this holistically or go after particular platforms (OS, Device type, etc.)
Ask if we need to focus on Facebook, or can we leverage Instagram and Whatsapp?
Summarize
Feature: Facebook Stories
Goal: increase engagement
(the main goal is engagement, which ties nicely with Facebook's mission of connecting people and expresses what matters to them)
User segments
I can think of three main user segments or personas for this
- Individual users - people who use Facebook for their consumption and to connect/share with friends and families
- Influencers - celebrities/models/famous people who use Facebook to promote a product or share their ideas
- Business - local or global brands using Facebook to promote their products
Out of the three, "Individual." is the one that will have the most significant impact on engagement, and if this segment is more engaged, the benefit can trickle down to other segments.
Let us think about some use cases that can help us improve engagement.
- Create unique and engaging content
- Get more people (friends and family) to view it.
- Learn from archived stories to improve
Out of the three, I would prioritize the first use case as the most important and would go with solutioning the first one. My reason to go with the first use case is that it directly impacts our goal of engagement, has a wow factor to it, and I do not think there is a reasonable alternative out there to help users build their unique and engaging content.
Solutions
- Users create stories to share with their friends/family, and they want to create a unique experience and share their emotions. I am thinking here is a self-guided story creation capability that leverages users' previous photos/video comments etc., to suggest the best camera angle, filter, or even music to help create a personalized story.
- Provide users preset templates that help them craft a story, for example, a template for a happy story, one for a sad story, etc. Something similar to PowerPoint templates.
We have two approaches in front of us, and I want to go with one solution, so I will use the following criteria to evaluate the two
- impact the engagement goal
- development effort
solution 1, impact to goal - H, Development Cost - H
solution 2, impact to goal - M, Development Cost - H
I would launch solution 1 to improve engagement and measure the following metrics.
- number of stories created with new way/ number of stories started using the new way
- Avg number of reactions to stories created using the new way
- Avg time spent per story
Bronze PM
First I’m going to clarify what Facebook Stories is and our overall goal for improvement, how Facebook Stories is used on Facebook and by which users, and then think about those users’ pain points and some solutions to solve those, and then go into the metrics by which I’d determine success.
Facebook Stories allow users to post “stories” for their friends to see for 24 hours. They are composed of text, stickers, music, photos, videos, users tags, polls, and for businesses custom links and cta buttons. Stories help Facebook compete with competitors that offer short-term, visual ways for user expression.
When we talk about improvement I’m assuming we’re talking about improving engagement for Facebook Stories, so that is what I’d like to focus on. Facebook’s goal is to bring users together and give them tools to express themselves, and Facebook Stories helps to bring users together and encourages them to spend more time on Facebook. More engagement means more time on site which means more ad revenue.
Now I’m thinking through the type of users who interact with Stories and what their pain points may be.
Customer Type | Needs/Pain Points |
Never created a story - individuals | Needs to know what stories are, how to create a story, easy path to creating a story, examples of types of stories |
Occasional story creators - individuals (avg once a month) | Often their stories are just an image and very boring - they need help in creating the “journey” of the story to make their stories compelling. They want to see who looked at their story. They might want feedback on their story - story reactions. |
Regular story creators - individuals (avg once a week) | Better analytics - how long did users watch their story? Gain of story fans over time? Dropped in which frame of the story? Story reactions. Recommendations for story improvements. |
Never created a story - businesses | Needs to know what stories are and how they can help their business, how to add a call-to-action in a story, how to easily create stories and measure impact. |
Occasional story creators - businesses (avg once a month) | Need good analytics to show who watched story, success of CTA or links, users dropped in which frame of the story, repeat users, gain of story fans over time, was whole story watched |
Regular story creators - businesses (avg once a week) | Need good analytics to show who watched story, success of CTA or links, users dropped in which frame of the story, repeat users, gain of story fans over time, was whole story watched, most popular stories |
Never watch stories | Let them know what a story is. Make it easier and more compelling for them to watch a story, once they watch stories stories should be more engaging so they will watch again |
Occasional story watchers (avg once month) | Make it easier and more compelling for them to watch a story, once they watch stories stories should be more engaging so they will watch again |
Regular story watchers (avg once week) | They are already engaged, so not going to focus on this group |
Since our goal is to increase engagement, I am not going to focus on either the regular story watchers or regular story creators since they are already engaged, and focusing on the other groups will ensure a bigger delta of success.
I am not choosing to focus on story watchers, because I feel that stories already get prominent placement, and there’s more chance of increasing engagement by focusing on the creator side.
I am going to choose to focus on:
Occasional story creators - individuals
Occasional story creators have a lot of potential to increase engagement, because they have already taken the step of creating stories, but maybe their stories are not compelling. I am going to choose to focus on occasional story creators - individual users because if they make better, more engaging stories that will increase engagement, defined as keeping users on the site longer, interacting with each other. Lots of individual users who are starting to create stories just share a photo memory as a story, and we need to guide them to create more compelling stories.
I am going to ignore regular story watchers and creators, since they are already engaged, and I think we can move the needle more by focusing on less engaged users.
Now I'm going to list some solutions to solve the pain points of occasional story creators.
Occasional story creators - individuals. Goal to get them to create more stories and get more regular watchers of their stories as well as more clicks.
Feature | Impact | Difficulty | Score |
Guidance for how to create a story - how to create a journey to draw a watcher through instead of just one image | High | Medium | High |
More prompts to create stories | Medium | Easy | Medium |
Analytics for their stories - what frame user dropped in | Low | Medium | Medium |
I would create a flow where after an occasional story creator clicks to add text or photo to a story, they are prompted through a dialogue box to add another 3-4 other photos or text elements to create a story with a beginning, middle and end. This would make stories more interesting and cause more repeated views of a user’s story, thus connecting users and causing more engagement.
Tradeoffs would be that for some occasional story creators, taking the time to create a 3 or 4 item story would be too much, but I think this is outweighed by the extra engagement we would get with more compelling stories. Watchers would spend more time on the site, thus creating more ad revenue, and creators would be incented to create stories more often because of increased reactions to compelling stories.
To measure engagement, I would measure:
#stories watched over 1 month time period
#stories per user watched by same watcher over 1 month time period
#stories created per user
#reactions per story
#story ads watched - is overall story engagement causing more clicks on story ads thus more ad revenue?
DAUs
MAUs
I'd do a rollout to a small subset of users, and closely watch metrics to make sure prompting higher-quality (more engaging) stories does work (are there more reactions per story, more stories watched over time
Platinum PM
Facebook’s mission
Facebook’s mission is to connect people and bring the world closer together
Why was facebook stories introduced and how it is helping achieve facebook’s mission
User problem
Users didn’t want whatever they share on their timelines is visible to others years later
They want to share a temporary moment and not store it permanently
Competition
Facebook stories was introduced as a strategic response to snapchat stories like feature
How does it help in getting closer to achieving Facebook's mission?
With the help of facebook stories, users can share their daily stories with the people they care about and similarly viewers get to know about the life updates of their close ones
Clarification questions
What is the goal of improving the facebook stories?
Is it getting more users to use it?
Or to improve the user experience of existing users?
Or to increase revenue generated through facebook stories?
Is this improvement targeted for a short term (a quarter), mid term (1-2 years) or long term (3-5 years)?
Assumptions
Improving user experience of the existing users to increase engagement
Time frame: 1-2 years
Identifying users
Based on the goals above, I would like to identify below the different kinds of users who are currently using facebook stories based on their usage
Natasha, who shares daily stories with everyone and follows her friends actively
Rajesh, who shares stories on a regular basis with closed ones and follows his friends
Radhika, who doesn’t like to share stories but is interested to go through stories of all the people
Lalit, who rarely goes through stories of people and doesn’t share stories
Anagha, who doesn’t go through other people’s stories, but shares her stories extensively
I would like to pick up Radhika as my target user
Radhika, who doesn’t like to share stories but is interested to go through stories of all the people
Demographics
Radhika is female 25 years old
Working professional
She lives with her family in her hometown
Behavior
She frequently checks what different stories have her friends added
She replies and comments on their stories
Challenges, needs and goals
She feels that everyone around her is so happy and living a fulfilling life, but she is not
She wants to share her life stories, but feels like others will not be interested in her stories
She is concerned that she has too many friends on facebook and she doesn’t want to share her story with everyone, rather she prefers to do it on whatsapp where she has fewer contacts
But, she finds it a hassle to select a few people to share the story with
User needs aligned with facebook goals
If the above mentioned user persona starts sharing facebook stories, it can be assumed that her user experience has improves and it is known that the more stories a user shares on facebook, the better their engagement is with the product
What are the needs of Radhika?
Want to feel safe while sharing a facebook story
Want to show others that her life is also happening (more attractive stories)
Want to see all sides of her friends’ lives rather than just the happier one
Want to know that her friends will be interested in what she is about to share
Based on the above needs, I would like to prioritize the needs using the following criteria:
Impact on user experience, Innovative?, Effort
Feeling safe: M, L, L
More attractive stories: M, L, M
Want to see all sides of her friends’ lives: L, H, H
Want to know if her friends will be interested: H, H, M
Based on the prioritization above, I would like to go ahead with the following need:
Before posting her stories, Radhika would like to know if this story will be appreciated by her friends i.e would they be interested
Ideas
Show Radhika what kind of stories are liked by or responded to by her friends
Help Radhika by providing her suggestions through the day about what to post as stories
Before posting the stories, give Radhika’s story a score to see how attractive the story is
When Radhika is posting a story, provide improvement ideas to the story before posting
Prioritization
Criteria
Impact on user experience, Innovative?, Effort
Show what kind of stories are like or responded by friends
L, L, L
Suggestions through the day
M, H, H
Score
H, H, M
Improvement ideas
H, M, M
Conclusion
For the above chosen user persona, if I am able to provide a score to the story user is trying to upload, we can help her to improve it on her own and give her an instant feedback and reinforcement if she should post it
Caveats
If the score remains persistently low, users will be discouraged to post stories on facebook
It will be hard to provide accurate scores for the users
How to go about doing it?
Based on the above caveats, we need to define a few criteria on the basis of which facebook stories will be scored as described below:
Quality of the picture or the video
Number of faces
Emotions on faces, if present
Number of stories
Are there friends’ faces included
Number of objects
Color of the picture elements
Person’s profile
Time of the day
Day of the week
…
Based on the existing stories, a model needs to learn what kind of stories are responded to by other friends and provide the appropriate scores
If it is difficult or inappropriate to score in exact numbers, Facebook can provide a rating out of 10
It should try to give the rating above 5, so that users are not disheartened
The ratings should increase with each change to the stories
In the future, the same data can be used to suggest the user what is missing from the story
PM
Facebook stories
What is this feature?
This feature essentially enables ephemeral byte-sized content to be shown to the user. It is not a long drawn post but a quick snapshot into a friend's life based on recent updates. It allows for facebook users to quickly get an update on their friends for the short-term in case they are waiting in line or at a coffee shop. Is that a correct assumption? - Yes
Clarifying questions
1. Is there any preliminary data around any particular improvement ask around Stories?
2. Was this feature brought into Facebook based on Instagram stories? Was the goal to add ito on Facebook any different form the goal of Instagram stories?
3. Do you want me to focus on any particular goal for this improvement feature?
Goal:
Considering facebook's mission is to basically provide a platform for people to connect and build communities, this feature plays a key role in allowing people to connect quickly without investing too much time. This will enable the users to come back to Facebook every now and then to connect and therefore increase the stickiness of the product which in turn increases the engagement -> because the more people view stories, the more it encourages users to chronicle their life without too much of a hassle.
Now lets look at different users who might be using this feature
1. Power user - Who uses Facebook very often and would like to post day to day stories and also view other's stories
2. A casual user who might just want to post once in a while, view other's stories, maybe uses a specific feature within Facebook like Groups/Events or their business page for a specific purpose but not more than that.
3. A rare occasional user who logs in to facebook to just check updates once in a while.
Let's focus on the casual user because we would like for them to engage more in Facebook and see value in using Stories.
What would be their needs or pain points?
- They also want to look at specific updates from friends they are specifically interested in, and not all related posts in the Newsfeed.
- They may also want to look at posts from specific pages or groups
- They may also want to get notified of these posts.
- They may not want to share with everyone
Lets list some solutions that might address these specific needs
- Maybe stories collates not just visual stories but shows recent content post, live sessions etc ephemerally from specific friends, groups and pages for the past 24 hours that the user can configure - like their own story board and they can engage with those alone
- A solution that will enable the user to share their to specific groups or pages?
- A solution that will allow quick asks for recommendations, maybe allow stories to be shared on a business page to put up a product that the user can click on and add to Facebook shops cart after a quick view
I would like to prioritize based on reach and implementational effort - and so I would like to choose 1 and see if 2 can be optimized to be added on.
If users can personalize their story board to see only stories from a specific audience, it might drive more engagement of the casual user to view the stories. It can initially be prioritized to show the ones they are interested but still have other stories in the end that can be shown consciously if the user decides to see it. Live sessions can also drive more engagement from this user to get instant gratification of connecting with other people while engaging through the platform.
How would I launch this?
I would look at launching this to a random sampling of casual users as a test group and compare with a control group who would not have the feature and look at the following metrics
Discoverability:
- How many users clicked on a story atleast once - per week/per month
- How many users set their specific audience whose stories they are interested in
- Average number of users added to a storyboard - if personalized
- #Stories created per week/per month - segmented by type - Videos/Images
Engagement:
1. #number of views on stories - daily/weekly/monthly
2. #number of views per user - daily/weekly/monthly
3. #Average time spent per user on the stories feature
4. Drop off rate per user on a story over a time period
5. # of interactions on a story - over a time period segmented by interactiont type - Reaction/reply etc.
Retention
1. Number of users who came back to view the stories
2. Number of users who came back and added more people to the target audience
Counter metrics
Did this feature affect
- Average time spent on Facebook per user?
- DAUs, MAUs?
Tradeoffs
1) One of the tradeoffs we might have to consider is, by allowing target audience to receive and view stories
- Will that bring down the overall engagement on the newsfeed page on Facebook
- Will that bring down overall engagement of users on facebook by reducing the time spent on facebook, because users might just engage with stories and close out the Facebook app
2) Also would be good to see the metrics across demographics - geography/age and across devices to see if there is a difference in engagement.
In summary, i would improve facebook stories by allowing for more personalization for users who might not actively engage with them on Facebook and track the adoption of the stories while this feature has been A/B tested
Okay. So we want to improve facebook stories.
First, we have to see what is meant by improve? Is it measured in terms of increase in engagement or users or monetisation?
It is an increase in engagement.
Okay. When i think of facebook stories, i tend to think of following user groups:
- Facebook User of Stories
- Celebrities
- Marketer/Advertiser
I would like to focus on the Facebook User. Would you like me to focus on anyone else?
No, Facebook User is okay.
Okay.
So facebook stories is essentially a way to share photos, videos, music, text etc. in a way that is semi permanent,i.e, Facebook stories stay for 24 hours on news feeds of other users.
They give direct and clear visibility on top of news feeds.
They allow people to start conversations.
Some of the pain points/use cases that i have in mind are:
Use Case | Description | Impact | Priority |
How can I customise my FB story duration? | Can I change the duration of my stories? Can it be 1 hour or 6 hours? | Medium | 4th |
How can I promote my FB story to non friends | Can I pay to promote FB stories to the feeds of non friends? | High | 1st |
Can I share my FB story on whatsapp/instagram so that I don’t have to re share? | Copy to whatsapp/IG feature | High | 2nd |
Can I share my Live videos in my FB story? | Live video option in FB stories | High | 3rd |
Can I see my stories from the past? | Stories option in FB memories which is default visible to the user himself.User can re share a 1 year old story as a new story | Medium | 5th |
I will use following metrics to measure impact:
Use Case | Description | Metric |
How can I customise my FB story duration? | Can I change the duration of my stories? Can it be 1 hour or 6 hours? | MAU(Custom)/MAU(Total) |
How can I promote my FB story to non friends | Can I pay to promote FB stories to the feeds of non friends? | ARPPU |
Can I share my FB story on whatsapp/instagram so that I don’t have to re share? | Copy to whatsapp/IG feature | No. of Users, No. of Re shares |
Can I share my Live videos in my FB story? | Live video option in FB stories | No. of Users |
Can I see my stories from the past? | Stories option in FB memories which is default visible to the user himself.User can re share a 1 year old story as a new story | Like, Shares |
I will AB test different story features and measure and compare my experimentation data.
Based upon the same, i will do a full population rollout.
I did end up thinking if the question was focusing more on improving the feature itself? How can the feature evolve?
If so, I think that's a very interesting one. Stories today capture ephemerality and provides a low pressure environment to share. I would say that one of the enhancements could be to improve the quality of interactions happening via stories. So today, while viewing stories I have two options - either i can DM the creator or do nothing (in which case my view would be logged). I've personally found this logging of my view a huge barrier for me to consume other people stories. Meaning I really want to see stories but actually dislike the idea that my view would get logged and the creator would know that I saw their story. This is a lost opportunity for creating a meaningful social interaction.
Two enhancements I could think of are
A. stop showing viewed signatures but start showing a count of views to all - this removes the pressure on a viewer that their view signature is getting logged
B. start showing count of unique DM threads a story has initiated. This could serve as the lever for virality where a higher number of counts encourages people to interact 1:1 via DM with the creator - this is going to be a huge benefit because it encourages meaningful private social interaction, while still having the potential to create virality
Metrics I'll track for the A/B test and that I'm expecting to shoot up from the baseline in order are as below:
1. No. of stories created daily/weekly/monthly (no guarantee, quite likely this might fall if people are addicted to dopamine hits of seeing viewer signatures) This is primary metric as this metric defines supply - everything starts from the supply side
2. No. of stories watched daily/weekly/monthly (almost certain to shoot up, as viewership pressure has been lifted)
4. No. of unique DMs via stories- this is genuine user "wellbeing" metric as this measures meaningful interaction
5. No. of unique DMs/story
3. No. of total DMs exchanged on stories
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