Design an education product for Instagram.

Some thoughts on answering a Facebook product design question like this.

Me: That's interesting. By education we mean providing knowlegdge to someone. (Correct). 

To me this is geographically agnostic and I would assume that speed to market is important so releasing something in the next 6-8 months is important. Are we aligned? (yes)

Also, I assume there are no other constraints such as budget or resources. (Correct). 

Stepping back, I want to think of:

Why we may want to do this?

What we may be trying to drive in terms of objective?

And then ...step into what type of resources / stakheholders may help us attain your goal, what their needs might be and how might I go about solving the problem for my chosen user. Once I have that, I would pick an MVP we can start with. Sounds good?. (YEs)

Why we may want to do this?

Instagram's mission is to share momories and thereby help people feel connected. I think of education being able to attain this since education is all about learning from each other which is when it really adds value to users. As I think of others in this space what comes to mind is Lynda, Coursera, etc. but I think content on those is much more detailed as in anywhere from 30min to couple hours even. While Instagram is all abouty sharing moments and moments to me generally means super short content. So from education perspective, something that can be short could be quick videos on cooking, gardening or some quick hacks, etc. I think those type of education content surely is meant for Instgram's mission to share moments. Aligned? (yes)

Next I want to think of what our objective should be so I can then think of who might help me drive that objective. I thikn we should focus on Engagemet because:
1. We already have 2 some billion users of Instagram so Adoption isn't much of a concern. 

2. Successful products drive value for users and when they find value they naturally engage with the product. 

3. Engagement leads to Retentio and Retention is leading inndicator of product market fit. 

4. Retention ultimately leads to Referals and hence adoption is in the end a matter of awareness. 

Aligned ? (yes)

Now I want to think of some stakeholders:
1. Creators

2. Consumers

3. Advertisers

4. Influencers

5. Instagram 

I will prioritze this based on which stakehoolder is going ot ultimately help me drive value. I bring up Instagram since if all my stakeholders gain value Instagram gains value. While Consumer stakeholder is more TAM, for consuemrs to engage we need to have enough content and for creators to want to create content, we need to first optimize for them. 

I think there might be different types of creators, so let me think on that a min.

1a) want to grow their popularity amongst freinds by being coined as smart, intelligent (ex: I can surely think of being applicable in dating space and nowadays people are using instagram to attract girls. Girls love intelligence!).

1b) want to hone their skills before they start making longer videos for Youtube.

1c) gain pleasure and satisfaction is giving back to community and helping others (ex: my mom gains deep satisfaction is teaching kids since she feels like she contributed to their bright future). 

I think their needs are unique since 1st group is going to be meticulous about what content is created (content that's popular) while 1c) is going to be focused on what skills are needed for the kid and maybe specific on content (my mom will lean towards math). Since Instagram is an app for younger people and most Instagram users are younger generation, I think we will have higher Engagement by focusing on 1a vs. others. 

Pain-points:

1) I don't know which videos I should create to gain me popularity.

2) I don't know how well my interviews are being perceived

3) I don't know how I can get better at my presentation, speech, etc.

Prioritization: Frequency and Severity of pain point, alignment w/ BO

Bold is prioritized since F=H, S=H and solving this will gain popularity for me driving Engagement overall.

Solutions:

1) Collaborative video creation with someone remote. This might lead to more value added video. I can see how this cna be very applicable to teaching someone dance steps (male and female have 2 distinct steps in salsa...side by side helps). This leads to more popularity since videos are more impactful for learning.

2) Analytics: Provide trend analytics whereby I can see what demographics tend to watch  my videos, what the trends are that my videos should be aligned to, what demographics have more usage of education product overall and what they mostly seem to be search for and watching, etc. 

3) Enable me to add notes that consumers can download. If some vidoes had that I would surely fgollow that creator since i can't seem to remember everyrthing I watch and I wish I did because some of these things are extremely beneficial. Espeically considering educaiton product, these are things you want to have notes for to go back and refer to (I can't remmeberr entire recipe for instance or everyimte I have ot re-google how to plant my fig plant). 

Prioritization criterias: Most value add to my user to gain popularity, effort in implementation, feasibility of implemenation, alignment w/ BO.

From MVP perspective, I think #1 is going to be easy but I think there may be less cases where people would wnat to collaboratively create something. #2 is really highly value add to user but effort is H. I think #3 though is easy to develop, adds high value to consumers thereby returning value to creator since their content will be followed and watched more often gaining popularity and this means creators will also create more content so we will increase Engagement from creators and consumers! 

Finally, I will wrap up my solution but would also mention some trade-offs.

#2 analytics may not be precise especialy in beginning and people change often so does trends so this may result in many inaccurate guidance which might loose trust of content creators and thereby consumers. #3 means creators will take more time to post their creations while Instagram is in my eeyes meant some thing that's low fidelity and rapid creation so this might not be utilized as much by creators but I also think creators who care about education since this is educational product may care more about proper content so maybe that's not a problem here.