how would you improve Facebook's safety check feature?

How the tool works?

So if my understanding is correct, the way the safety check feature works is that when a global crisis reporting agency alerts Facebook about an incident in an area and when the users in the area post about the incident, the feature gets activated. Once it is activated the users in that area will be receiving notifications to mark themselves safe. The users can also find help and offer help to other users in the area. Is that correct?

Clarify Goal

In terms of improvement of the tool may I ask why do we need to improve it in the first place? Is it to increase the reach of the tool and improve the engagement as a result or to improve certain features in the tool for example get more people to donate in at least one of the fundraisers present in this crisis response or add a completely new feature that the tool currently is missing which will help serve better? (for eg increase user engagement)

I am guessing that most of the users will be using their mobile phones to engage with the tool since it is easy to carry around during a crisis situation. Is that what you have in mind too?

So I want to clarify that we will be increasing the user engagement with the safety check tool on mobile phones which means that the tool reaches more people which ultimately serves the mission statement of Facebook that is to give people the power to build strong communities and get the world closer. 

I want to separate users into distinct groups and evaluate their pain points, prioritize them and create solutions according to the priority and then decide on which solutions to build by evaluating the reach, impact, confidence, and effort.

User Segments 

    The users can be divided into those who are in a situation to offer help and those who are in a situation to receive help. I am concentrating only on the use cases for the former one because I am assuming that as users get help, they can turn to be the ones who offer help

1. Power users who actively find out and share information regarding the crisis situation and reach out publicly

2. Normal users who offer help only to friends and don’t share any other information regarding the crisis. 

3. Users who don’t use the tool at all

I want to focus on the pain points of normal users because I think in general that segment would have a large chunk of users and increasing their engagement would automatically increase the user engagement as a whole 

Pain Points of Users

1. The users might be skeptical about meeting strangers and offering them help 

2. The users might think that they will not be able to make any difference even if they offer to help

3. They might start the process of donating to fundraisers but discontinue in between and forget to donate 

4. They might not be aware at all of the fact that there are options to offer help 

I want to prioritize these pain points as 3,2,1,4

Solutions

1. Provide a separate section on the page which shows previous testimonials about how common people made a difference by offering help that would motivate the user 

2. provide current happenings in the form of a collapsible side pane which provides short information like so and so person received so and so items from so and so person can also push the user to offer help

3. We can send some push notifications which mentions the safety measures the user can take while meeting a stranger and provide an offer help link in the same notification itself

4. Send notifications and emails which will have the link to the checkout page where the user will complete the donation process and also provide a pop window when the user opens the app which will prompt the user to complete the donation process 

5. We can provide product tours/ walkthroughs of the security check which will make the user aware of all the features 

PRIORITIZE SOLUTION 

 I want to prioritize the solutions by cost vs impact ratio

1. So I think providing previous testimonials to motivate users will have a high impact, as the testimonials are always available I think it is a matter of embedding that into the page which would take low effort/cost - 

2. Providing a collapsible pane that would track the ongoing community service activities would take a lot of effort and cost but the impact would be high

3. Sending push notifications about the safety measures the user could take doesn't take much effort, also the impact can be medium

4. Again sending notifications to complete the donation process wouldn’t take much effort and it will have a high impact 

5. Provide product tours/walkthroughs can take medium effort and the impact will also be medium

So I would concentrate on building features to provide testimonials about how people made a difference using the tool, build the push notifications features which provide safety measures and provide a link to the donation process, and provide product walkthroughs to make the user aware of how to use the tool.

Success Metrics

1. Out of the users who received a notification to complete the donation process how many of them completed the donation process on a daily basis

2. Out of the number of views of the testimonials how many users made an offer to help post on a daily basis from the start of the crisis

Conclusion

I will improve the safety check tool by focusing on improving the user engagement of the users who rarely engage by building features like provisioning testimonials about how people made difference using the tool, send push notifications about the safety measures users can take, and send notifications to complete the donation process, and also provide walkthroughs and I will focus on success metrics like the ratio of number of users who received notification