How would you design a product for improving teenage health?

Response:

Follow up questions : 

Let's define what we mean by “Teenage health”  and “ Who am I “

I would like to start with Who am I 

1. Big corporations like Google, FB etc who have access to their inherent products like maps, fitbit, android apps etc or an upcoming start up with limited resources and capabilities. 

2. Do we have any competitor products that I need to be aware of, or is our product going to be first in the market. 

3. Do I have  time constraint to launch this 

4. Do I have any constraint on pricing or markets I have to build this for? 

Assuming Interviewers answers 

1. You are a big corporation with unlimited resources and capabilities at your disposal 

2. Yours is the first to market product so you define the market, pricing and there is no constraint (on constraint is to launch and land the product) 

Now I would like to understand What does Health mean in context of teen

Health as such can be classified under 2  big umbrellas for teens

Physical 

• Obesity

• Drug abuse

• Alcohol

• Eating disorder 

• Teen pregnancies  

• STD

Mental 

• Depression

• Anxiety

• ADHD

• Smartphone/social media 

• Body image issue

• Bullying 

So which particular issue in general do we want to focus for this conversation 

– Assuming Mental health is the one picked by the interviewer 

Here is how I want to structure my answer

1. Identify why are we building this  - Clearly narrow down the problem 

2. Who all are we building this for - Identify user segments, user pain points 

3. How will we build this - Product mission/vision, feature set, roadmap, rollout plan, GTM and Trade off 

To identify why are we building this for, 

I would like to further narrowed down by Gender types(M/F)  and even Gender neutral types or we can solve for all teenages, Reasons for calling out Gender here because  for Mental health we need to factor in additional hormonal changes(that are very gender specific or Gender neutral)  

Depending on the location(First world vs Third world) and economic status, economic status (Poor, Middle class, Rich) combination of both defines access to health care, government assistance , Access to technology, education structure and support. 

As the problem is very broad i would proceed making following assumption 

1. We are solving teenage problem for all irrespective of Gender types

2. We are currently going to solve for First world countries(Poor, Middle Class  or Rich) to begin with because

• Mental health as an issue is being recognized and accepted well in first world countries. In Underdeveloped countries there are auxiliary problems of access to food, access to education and access to healthcare which might make it harder to narrow down the issue.

• Solution we come up with might be easier to reach teens in First world countries with easier access to technology (Smartphones and consistent internet connections - at school and home) 

3. I would also want to make a clear distinction between mental health caused by external factors (social media, peer pressure) vs internal factors (obesity, other physical health affecting mental issues ex: being sick longer has a mental impact).  For this problem I would like to focus on Mental health brought in by external factors. 

Summarizing the Problem statement

I would like to define our problem statement as 

Build a Product to improve Mental health(caused by external triggers) of all teenagers in First world countries, irrespective of their socio economic status.  

We are focusing on mental health issues as it is one of the major teenage causes of suicides, school drop outs, lagging back at school, depression, homelessness, juvenile cases. 

Now I would like to focus Who are we building this for 

Any products we build for teens should cover a well rounded feedback mechanism that is very important in resolving the Mental health issues. 

1. Teens

2. Parents/Caregivers

3. Teachers - optionally

4. Counselor/Therapist/Doctors 

I would like to list down the pain points for teenager have from mental health standpoint imposed by external factors

1. Not able to distinguish real issue vs superficial issue so they can move on

2. Information overload (Facts, Fake, controversial data )

3. Not enough support role models to talk to or to emulate 

4. Unable to handle emotions

5.  Peer pressure 

6. Pressure from family to get good grades

7. Unrealistic standards set by social media

For the purpose of this discussion, I would want to build a app(which is both accessible on mobile devices as standalone app) or a web version (through a browser)  

Success Metrics:

As its first to launch Adoption /User acquisitions and Activation the North Stars

• # of App downloads

• # of User signups

• Daily Active users and monthly Active users value ->To keep any eye on stickiness 

• Quick Ratio = (Active user + Resurrected users - Retained users)/User Churn > 1 

Counter metrics 

# number of uninstalls

App would have clear

1. Onboarding

2. Usage 

3. Feedback mechanism 

Onboarding

1. Login through gmail, FB, okta or any existing accounts

2. Ability to share the digital wellbeing details to the app - to monitor social media usage in a day

Usage features

1. App has the capability to sync with the user calendar (School timing schedule) or have the user create calendar events. App will plan the user's day effectively with appropriate breaks.

2. App clearly highlights or provides the breakdown of time spent on social media, actual physical activities (basketball class, PE class)

3. App has a clear daily journal or daily check point call to actions ( okay, feeling annoyed, feeling overwhelmed, feeling sad etc) 

4. Depending on the teens location, current news relevant to city, state, country and the news trends on social media(Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram,Snap) App will send out quick cards about actual facts, % of likelihood of that news, Subject matter experts opinion on the current events. 

5. App will also surface messages which are specific to teens interest and are knowledgeable and cheerful

6. App can also be configured to provide a score card(mental score) of the day (Red, Yellow, Green) that can be shared with caregivers and therapists to monitor consistent Red patterns and to intervene.  – This will be part of Feedback portion of app

7. Moonshot idea: Extend the App with VR capabilities so users can jump in and express themselves freely with a virtual(game mode-AI model) therapist to share their issues, and the model provides them a gaming course to tackle that will enhance the brain neurons to come out of the depressed mode. 

Now I would like to weigh each one of these features against Impact to User, Impact to Company(Will company be able to sustain to stay relevant), Engineering complexity (Time to build and available capabilities) 

With the above breakdown i will focus on 3,4,1 and 2 for Initial launch, 5&6 in future roadmap, 7 into couple of years 

Trade off

As we are dealing with user data we need to be clear of User data privacy, and security. We need to comply with each region's laws to make sure we don;t violate the law.  Things like GDPR, Right to be forgotten have to be baked in.

Clarify: What is the goal of this product? Is this going to be a website or app or a physical product?

Let’s go with an app for now.

Users of this product: Teenagers (age 13-19) and their parents.

Use cases/Pain points:

1. Food habits at this age are very important for overall health and development for a growing teen. Calorie intake also needs to be monitored to prevent the growing obesity in the teens. This is especially a concern for the parents more than the teens.
2. Physical activity is also a big concern. Teens spend most of their time on the electronic gadgets with limited physical activity.
3. Staying hydrated is a big concern for the overall health.
4. Forget to go for annual health checkups.
5. Don’t know which doctor to go to. Reviews for doctors not widely available.
6. Mental health is often neglected when talking about health. The teens are especially stressed due to mounting pressure from parents and school about doing well in school especially nearing college entrance exams.

With these use cases in mind, I suggest the following features:

1. Scanning your food with your phone camera which can recognize what food item it is and based on the portion size can log in the calorie intake. The app can also provide an alert when you daily calorie intake exceeds the recommended number (according to your BMI, weight, height etc). This app can send alerts to the parents’ app as well who can monitor their kid’s health. There could also be weekly articles about the dietary requirements and benefits for different food items that are popular among teens. There could also be articles promoting healthier alternatives of some food items.
2. The app can track steps, exercise times, calories burnt, heartbeat etc. Teens can earn badges for increased physical activity which can be shared on social media to increase cred with friends. The app can also track sleep time and screen time and provide a weekly report of these numbers.
3. Hydration reminders can be scheduled in the app according to the required need.
4. The app will remind when it is time for the annual health checkup. It can store the results of the last health check up and new results and see how the overall health may have increased or decreased from the past year.
5. The app could have reviews from other teens/parents about the doctors in the area. These reviews could help users decide which doctor they would like to visit.
6. The app could have the option for online conversation with a therapist/doctor for any mental health concerns. There could be forums where the teens can anonymously post and discuss their issues with others of their age. There could be an option to track your daily moods in the app. If the mood stays angry or depressed for a few days, the app can send an alert to the parents so that they can talk to their kid and take further action if needed. We can also have links to various articles on stress relief techniques and posts for any group events for mental health awareness.

Having looked at all the potential features, I would like to look at the priority and ease of implementation for these features:

1. Food Habits – Scanning the food item and recognizing it will be more complex since it would involve computer vision and AI. We could also have a simpler feature where the user enters the food item and quantity on their own without scanning it, to make it simpler.
2. Physical activity – This is widely done by multiple fitness trackers, and it would be moderately complex to build.
3. Hydration reminders – Simple to implement but not a high reward feature since already other apps doing this.
4. Annual health checkup – Just the reminder would be easy to implement and benefit the user. The scanning and comparing old and new health reports would be a little more complex since it would include OCR or computer vision. But this would still be moderately complex. The reward for implementing this would be higher since user can track year on year health via the app.
5. Reviews – This would include getting a list of all doctors in all regions and then users providing reviews for them. This would be a very extensive and exhaustive task with high rewards.
6. Mental health – This would be a very important feature which would be moderately complex to implement but high reward.

Overall, my recommendation would be to implement features 1 (without scanning food, user enters food and quantity), 3, 4 and 6 because they would be not very difficult to implement and would cover a lot of fitness requirements for teenage health.