How would you design a product to help people relocate during pandemics like the COVID-19?

Short-term/ Long-term
Who is designing this product?
1. Government, takes a long time, good operation implementations
2. Non-Profits, non enough resources
3. Company for profit partner with Government

Goal:

Short-Term: releasing the pain of crisis and separation

Long-Term: profitable business model to make the relocation easy and effective.

User Persona -Who by location

Domestic
International( Due to Pandemic travel limitation, and different countries with different quarantine rules and visa complications, for the simplicity of this exercise, we ignore this segment for now.)
- People with a home to go to
  1. School
  2. Family Separation
- People don’t have a home in US: Lost jobs/ Refugees/Affected by Covid
- Relocate voluntarily

Let’s only focus on the first segment, people with a home to go to.

User Needs

Pain Points	Reach	Impact	Effort	Total
Get home fast and safe	5	5	1	11
Avoid High occurring COVID cases routes	5	5	3	13
Ensure their own healthiness	5	5	3	13
Avoid human contact and touches during the travel	5	5	5	15
If there are nights they need to stay over, the staying environment can also be safe and with hygiene products well prepared	1	5	1	7
Maintain consistent communication with their family and friends to make sure they are safe	4	5	5	14
Have resources to get jobs and address medical attentions	3	5	3	11

Prioritization

I will rate the above pain points from Reach , Impact and Effort on a scale of 1-5 and ( High effort is 1 and low effort is 5) and focus on the top pain points to find solutions with. Based on the result, I will address the high scores 15,14, 13, and 13 to deep dive for solutions.

Solutions

Needs	Solutions	Impact	Effort	Risk	Total
Avoid human contact and touches during the travel	Plan the route with least of COVID cases, and plan for vehicles with least human maintenance and physically touches, and transition most interactions digitally	H, 5	H, 1	H,1	7
Maintain consistent communication with their family and friends to make sure they are safe	Government can partner with main social media/ communication companies to build a live update feature	H,5	H,3	H,1	9
	Government can partner with main social media/ communication companies to support this initiative with their products, and monitor data for the people to be connected when they are in places with low signal	H,5	L,5	M,3	13
	Government can partner with main social media/ communication companies to help people send notifications at key stations and stops to their indicated family member and friends to stay in contact	H,5	H,1	M,3	9
Avoid High occurring COVID cases routes	Implement with Google API and government Live COVID tracking system to indicate COVID cases updates, and setup route planning around those spots	5	3	3	11
Ensure their own healthiness	Indicate/highlight COVID testing stations on the map as they are relocating, so they can get tested on the road	H,5	L, 5	M,3	13
Ensure their own healthiness	Sell COVID testing Kit in main gas station, grocery/ convenience store	H,5	H,1	H,1	7

MVP

Government can partner with main social media/ communication companies to support this initiative with their products, and monitor data for the people to be connected when they are in places with low signal
Indicate/highlight COVID testing stations on the map as they are relocating, so they can get tested on the road
Implement with Google API and government Live COVID tracking system to indicate COVID cases updates, and setup route planning around those spots

Metrics

For the sake of time, we will only consider the Short-Term goal and define related metrics: releasing the pain of crisis and separation

North Star Metric:

Short-term: healthy people successfully relocated/ healthy people before relocation

# of Healthypeople started to relocate

# of Healthy people related

# of relocation trips

# of new COVID cases, during relocation.

Lokesh Kumar R · Answer 2 · 2021-05-28T13:32:08+0000

Since the question deals with movement of people and handling a pandemic disease, there are certain information needed about the background like who are we?, Where do we operate, etc., before going about anything. So I would like to clarify the following to understand the situation:

Are we some government body or a startup or a Corporate trying to address this issue? Government body helping its subjects find a safe place to reside in.
Where do we operate at? People of which place are we trying to help at relocation? Let us asssume that the place we operate from is India
By "Relocate" do we mean to cause a permanent change in their residence or a temporary one to address the COVID issue? We mean to change them temporarily.
Every product made tries to attain a goal no matter if they are a Government's policy or a private org's thing. So, for the present case considering the situation, I would like to assume our goal is to make the process as easy and safe as possible.

Now, with the above information I certainly was able to get a grasp of what I've to handle.

Personally whenever I plan out things for something, I would like to understand whom am I building it for and what are their needs. So, next I would like to understand the user base that would be in our focus:

Citizen's of the same country trying to relocate
Citizens's of a different country trying to relocate/ get back to where they belong

At any time a different nation's individual staying in a country will be lesser and can be handled personally. While the handling the huge masses of country's population is more difficult due to the numbers.

So, of this I would like to address the 1st category.

This category is big and have various needs. Thus, I would like to breakdown further to understand them properly.

Citizen(s) located in their homecity.
Citizen(s) located at a city away from their homecity beacuse of the work.
Citizen(s) at a different city away from their homecity as a tourist

Of all this, the 1st category won't want to relocate as they are already in their Homecity with their family. While the 2nd and 3rd group would want to relocate to where they belong with their family. This might be because they would feel safe and can handle COVID from their hometown a lot easier.

So, I would like to focus on both the segments together.

Thus, through the above discussion, the PS changes as

Design a product that helps people relocate to their home city during the Pandemic

With the user base decided, Like I mentioned above I would like to understand their needs/issues before planning out anything.

I need to get an E-Pass to relocate
With Covid cases increasing, I would like to know the best route with lesser number of cases
Need Information about the mode of travel available and to book the ticekts as most of the usual means of travel are closed due to Covid.
In case of travel with private vehicle, I need to know the route that is not accessible currently as the region is closed.
Just before travel, I'll need to check if I'm a carrier as a precaution taken by a cautious citizen. Though this might prevent a user from relocating, this is a must to check as no one would want to be a carrier and infect their loved ones.

Pain PointReachImpact

1	High as every other travellor has to get an E-pass before travelling	Low as there is a dedicated site to get E-pass
2	High as no one would want to go through a route that increases the risk of getting infected	High as there are no properly collected resources addressing this
3	Medium as people preferring a public transport currently is less	Medium as there are lesser number of people preferring the Public transport
4	High as many route's are being closed as Redzone	High as there are no single resource to check this out
5	Medium as more no of people are afraid to go to a hospital and check themselves	High as people won't want to be carrier and reach their home with parents/loved ones

Apart form user's needs, one important thing the Govt would want to the product to address is that the relocaters shouldn't be COVID positive.

So, from above analysis, it makes sense to address Painpoints 2,4, and 5 in our MVP. While, 1 and 4 can be addressed at a later stage.

Solutions:

SolutionsReachImpact EffortNote

Using Google Maps API and the Government's data on the number of cases we can develop an interface that marks regions into various levels of "How safe the region is" The user can use this database to come up with a plan of reaching hi/her destination	High	High	Low	The Solution addresses painpoint 2
Using AI to find the most optimal and safe route for a person to relocate from place A to B through routes with lesser number of cases. It will also avoid the COVID hotspots as they are neither open forsomeone to enter nor are they safe.	High	High	Medium	The Solution addresses painpoint 2 and 4
The app can connect with Arogya Setu App through its API and alert the user in real time when he/she is closer to a person that has higher risk of infection to COVID while travelling. This is possible as Arogya Setu is the Indian Covid tracing app and has these details collected from the user.	High	Medium as not everyone might have updated their details in Arogya Setu properly	Low	The Solution addresses painpoint 2
The app can have a questionnare that a user can answer to analyse how probable is he in being a carrier. The questionnare could be prepared with the Health Ministry's guidance	Medium	Medium	Low	The Solution addresses painpoint 5
The app can help the user book a meeting at a Hospital with the least crowd in real-time and get themselves a Doctor's advice.	Medium as people might not like going to a hospital	High	Medium as it would be a bit difficult to manage the data in real-time and suggest a user the right hospital	The Solution addresses painpoint 5

So from the above disussion, I would build a product with the Solutions 2,3, and 4 as the features of MVP.

Success Metrics:

Since the goal is more of Qualitative than Quantitative, I would like to measure the following metrics as they would help us give an idea indirectly how the app helps in safety:

# of Downloads of the app

# of alerts a User received while travelling in a route specified by the app

# of users searched for a route in the app

Summary:

Through a detailed discussion, I tried to narrow down the scope to build a product to helpusers relocate to their home city with safety. Came up with a set of feature that addresses the user to reach a destination safely through a safer route and alerting the user when they are close to a riskier person of getting infection. We also helped the user in checking whether they are a carrier through a questionnare in the app.