Here is my answer. Feel free to comment and mention improvement points.

Clarification questions:

• Clarify definition of fitness app. Whether it will provide fitness videos/suggestions or whether it will also keep a track of vitals.
• Based on that, Is this fitness app a software product or a hardware fitness band?
• If only software product will this have presence on both iOS and Android?
• Users:
  • When you say “for Meta (Facebook)”, are you referring to the people working in Meta i.e. internal product for employees?
  • If not, will this product be only for the people who have an account on Facebook?
• Is there any particular goal we are trying to achieve through this product?
• Is this MVP focussed on US geography?

Assumptions: This is a MVP mobile app having presence on both iOS and Android. Goals is to increase revenue. No particular user segment provided. We need to create a prodiuct around Meta’s mission which is focussed on bringing people closer,

My Framework

Users/Customers: 

• Health Freaks: People who do a lot of physical activity and make sure they keep a track of their vitals.
• People with Sedentary Lifestyle: People who get busy in their work life an unable to break the routine and focus on their health.
• Old Age people.

Here choosing health freaks wouldn’t be the right decision as would already be using a lot of health products. Old Age people might not be using Facebook that often so focussing on them would again be a costly. Hence I choose people with sedentary lifestyle. Now if I deep down further, I chose frequent active users of Meta instead of non-active users.

Painpoints/Usecases: The Fitness App market is already competitive. So instead of focussing on conventional usecases. Meta needs to focus on the main pain points of this user base

• Unable to get motivation.
• Do not have time.

Features: Provide them videos of exercises that could be done in 5-10 mins, with customizing option to make is less and more strenuous. Additionally, allow them to connect with their existing facebook friends and share their progress.

Success Metrics:

• Acquisition rate: Total Number of app downloads
• CSAT score
• Guard rail metrics: How often FB share feature is used to share fitness report?

Clarifications

• Is this ‘fitness app’ a separate app? [Yes]
• Is the goal of the launch to improve the user engagement on FB, which can be measured by # of share, comment, like, etc? [Yes]

Structure

• Whether this launch aligns with FB’s core mission?
  • [Well aligned]FB’s mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Fitness activity has long been one of the most shared activity category, even before FB launch its own app.
• What’s the benefit if we launch this app?
  • Better UX for FB users
  • Fitness data will enhance FB’s knowledge of its users, which is critical for its ads business.
• What’s the unique value FB can bring to end users?
  • Even though most fitness apps already support inviting users, FB already have the entire social circle covered. User doesn’t need to invite friends from scratch. From day1, user can interract with all their friends.
  • Normal fitness app can not provide a unified experience after user’s fitness activities is shared to FB, while FB has the ability to build a more seamless experience, for user to interract after the sharing, or even during the sharing.
• What’s the risk if FB doesn’t take any actions.
  • If a fitness app gained enough market share, it might expand from fitness into social and even pose a threat for FB

• [Hardcore], who are pro-users, who actively pushes their limits and love to share photos and records of their performance.
• [Regular], who engage in medium intensity exercise regularly, to stay healthy. They love to motivate others.
• [Beginner], who just started, struggling to form the routines. They loves encouragement and advices.

1. Hard to stay motivated, it’s a challenge for most beginners to form a routine successfully after initial attempts.
2. Prune to be hurt, many beginners start working out in an hope to improve fitness level, but end up getting hurt and quit.
3. Have to click share after work out, and only limited ways of sharing.

1. Run with me, to address the motivation issue. where user can
   • Form or join a FB group
   • Organize or enroll to an activity and see who else has enrolled
   • Join the activity
   • Share the group activity on FB
2. You are awesome, to address the motivation issue, where the user can publish their personal goal, like run 2 miles x 3 times every week, for 10 weeks. Friends can see their goal and progress, and like it.
3. Proceed with Caution, to give user indications based on the vast number of users, such as: most users at your stage(7th week into running), with similar physical condition, warm up for 25 min, and run at this pace. Hopefully the user can avoid being too aggressive and hurt themselves.
4. Live cheering, while user is engaging in a hard challenge, like first time to run for 3 miles, they can cast their progress onto their FB, and if there are likes or comments, we notify them live through the fitness app, and their wearable device.

Prioritization

• Run with me, User Impact: High, Complexity: Med, as it’s very similar to existing FB features.
• You are awesome, User Impact: High, as publishing personal goal is one of the best ways to keep motivation. Complexity: Low.
• Proceed with Caution, User Impact: High, almost everyone appreciates advices. Complexity: High, still a challenge to aggregate massive data and provide safe instructions. Might also involve legal risk.
• Live cheering, User Impact Med/Low given the real time constraints, won’t be useful in most cases. Complexity: High, also has some privacy concern to cast real time activities.

Goal:

Should we build a fitness app for facebook – decide and scope it out if needed

Strategic decision making

How big is the market : Fitness is an 80 billion dollar industry, lately there’s been the digitization trend of the same via fitness tracker/apps. Google recently acquired Fitibit to it’s wearable portfolio for 2 billion dollar so yes its a big enough for FB to conside

Is it a fit for FB:  The current tools for fitness has a very strong community angle – whether its running groups or sports ( which are social by default) or exercise classes or gym which also happens to be biggest problem. I don’t know where to find people I can trust who I can go running with etc. I think FB excels at the social angle and also can effectively solve this problem

What’s the competition like : Hardware: Apple watch, other fitness bands , software: Fitbit premium, nike training club, Apple watch app

Can we differentiate/do we have a potential moat: The social graph of facebook can help create a network effect moat around fitness based communities

How do we measure success: The user facing goal will qualtitative, I would put it around how users feels – do they feel fitter after using the product for 30 days.

Business wise this should drive retention and engagement, I’d make retention the primary metric because it also aligns with a metric that is key to success when it comes to getting fit – persistentence of effort – does the user keep coming back again and again

Other metrics to track

AAERC funnel for the feature ( acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, churn)

Exercise/workouts per user /month

Timespent/retention on FB

Time spent/session in feature

Clarity

When you say fitness I’m assuming it’s both fitness tracking and helping you get fit in the process

We are referring to physical fitness here

Will it sit inside Facebook app or outside, I’m assumign inside since it’s a new app and we’re not sure if needs another app. This allows us to bootstrap and test the water before we spend good amount of money acquiring customer and learning.

App or webb? I’d recommend starting with app only if it’s a contraint since at some point it may need to interact/pull data from fitness trackers, that’s much more organic to the app eco system rather than the web eco system

Whats the goal here: launch and find PM fit (monetisation is a non goal)

Is GTM part of the scope? not necessarily

Context settings

Facebook’s mission is to connect the people of the world and is effectively an online version of your offline social graph

User journey

Let’s see the typical user journey for a fitness driven goal in the physical world –

Realisation: User realises that they need to work on fitness in general or towards a specific goal,

Measurement: user starts tracking fitness in a number of ways – weight, selfies , strength results etc.

Tools: The tools they have are running, going to the gym or classes  – they look for community there and I recall reading studies where the community angle helps sustain the habit and help achieve your goals.

Perhaps because the community involement makes the process more enjoyable and less of a chore + you get motivation from them.

other behaviour: They may post updates to social

Does it make sense to build the fitness app? 

Yes, if you look at trends – peleton, strava etc there is scope for an online community that assists the user journey and also make you feel like you’re part of something bigger virtually.

The self worth is moving online – there are virtual rewards that are Proof of the works of your skills, in IG it’s your follower count , in Fitbit its your daily stats etc and so on.

Pain points

– I struggle with finding trustworthy people to do what I want in the physical world

– Tracking/measuring progress is hard

– I find motivation from group to be incredibly powerful but in todays buy lives it’s hard to plan something out in terms of a group activity

– I don’t feel motivated enough to continue working out etc/  I got lazy

– I want to get recognition for my effort

Customer persona

user persona from a fitness perspective

– Already fit users : These want to keep the momentum going, they frequently work out, own dedicated work out attires and equipment, they might be using supplements to enhance their progress further . They might frequently post on social – them working out, what weights they are doing and about the techniques ( workout and post work out)

– already on their fitness journey users: These have started working out already. They might be looking for advice/tips on faster progress, they will be struggle with motivation after their progress rate starts pleateauing, they may or may not post on social.

They may fear judgement and not having perfect physique

– Interested but yet to start the journey: These users are aware that they need to start their fitness journey but they don’t know about the choices/where to start/community that can help/tips advice etc

-Unaware: these users haven’t realised that they need to start getting fitter

I want to focus on solving for 2nd and 3rd persona because the need is strongest here.

Needs

• I want to be aware of my fitness level
• I want to be able to set goals that are reasonable and give me a sense of progress
• I want to be able to measure progress
• I want to be able to measure progress easily ( read my fitness tracker etc)
• I want to make it visible to the world I choose to ( goals, progress etc)
• I want advice/tips on techniques related to the activity
• I want to be able to see choices WRT getting fitter
• I want to be able to connect with the activity fitness community online
• I want to feel motivated
• I want recognition

The following should help you answer this Facebook product launch PM interview question:

What is my role in making this decision: Am I the PM of this product?

Interviewer: yes?

Interviewee :ok

What is the goal of this product, what problem is FB trying to solve?

Interviewer: What do you think?

Interviewee:  I would tie the fitness app goal to FB vision. Facebook wants its users to get more from life with better health. A fitness app can help them meet their fitness and health goals so they could have more energy and vitality to participate, celebrate life with family and friends. And help each other get through the rough times and celebrate the winning moments.

Interviewee: Would we agree to be the goal behind developing the app?

Interviewer : sure ok go on

Interviewee: what is the goal of this new fitness App, is it to improve engagement from existing user base DAU.

Activation: Add new users to FB

Is it to increase revenue from advertisers as this would be a  new targeted segment ?

Interviewer: what do you think?

Interviewee: Based on FB mission to empower people to build community and make the world more open and connected. I would pick Engagement as the primary north star metric. As 45% of the world’s population is already using FB I would not consider activating new user as a north star metric. FB mission is to engage people above monetization so i would consider Revenue a secondary metric as 89% of FB revenue comes from advertising.

Interviewee:  Before I proceed in my analysis I Just want to be clear  that as a PM you are asking me to do an opportunity assessment or go no go analysis of a new product/feature altogether.

Interviewer: Before I make my assessment I want to make sure that we are thinking of this app as an additional feature to existing facebook. Meaning for now we can access it only if we are logged in to the facebook app and not like messenger that we can just access without getting into Facebook.

Interviewer: yes

As this will be a big feature idea I would use a 10 point assessment opportunity framework to determine its viability. After I have the answers to this I will complete a lean canvas to assess the opportunity as well.

Ok I will now quickly tell you the 10 point criteria and possibly ask you questions to help me fill the gaps. Does that work

Interviewer: sure

So I now want to understand these 10 things

1. Exactly what problem will this app solve?  What’s the (value proposition)

2. For whom do we solve that problem? (target market)

3. How big is the opportunity? (market size)

4. What alternatives are out there? (competitive landscape)

5. Why are we best suited to pursue this? (our differentiator)

6. Why now? (market window)

7. How will we get this product to market? (go-to-market strategy)

8. How will we measure success/make money from this product? (metrics/revenue strategy)

9. What factors are critical to success? (solution requirements)

10. Given the above, what’s the recommendation? (go or no-go)

Ok so lets get some information here

1. So FB is trying to solve the problem of getting in shape so people can improve their overall health and improve quality of life. Better health leading to more sharing of amazing moments.
2. Possible use cases

• Working parents who can never find time to exercise or are not motivated when they do have time
• Older parents who have kids in middle school and high school and want to exercise so they can keep up with their kids
• Busy professionals who don’t have time to hit the gym even though they are paying members
• Women who can’t seem to lose that extra 10 pounds no matter how hard they try
• Brides to be so they can get in shape before the big day
• Overweight millennials who want to get in shape to enter the dating scene.

3. I would focus on the Brides to Be as the uses case because sharing wedding pics on Facebook has sprawled into a multi million dollar industry. Also 70% of women are online on FB everyday.
   1. Fitness App help connect local trainers with the Brides that can do one on one sessions
   2. Fitness App build custom plan for brides based on wedding date and amount of weight needed to lose
   3. Fitness App will  lets bride pick her cheer squad who will hold her accountable  and help her meet her goals.
   4. Fitness App will let Bride invite groom and other family and friends to share the journey together.
   5. Fitness App will allow Bride to share milestones in FB Stories and News Feed
   6. Fitness App will have pre set workout plans that bride can follow based on her needs

I will use the Ice model to prioritize use cases

Based on my analysis a Fitness app that helps Bride form a custom workout plan and is able to share her journey with her spouse and friends can create a huge impact for both the bride and the special people in her life.  The social aspect of the journey should increase engagement which can be measured .

4. The fitness app industry is pretty saturated. From on demand workouts to customized plans lots of apps are in that space some are free and other have paid subscription. FitBit is a wearable device that has one of the most popular apps. Nike training has another popular app. Although the 7min work out is the most used amongst younger woman. This is free with an upgrading paid option.
5. Facebook has a DAU of 1.6 billion users. No other social platform comes close. So feature adoption if done right can be quite fantastic. For example 500 M users are active on FB watch every day. Also the peer to peer platform allows to share messages, vidoes which can be a great motivating factor for peer support in a fitness app. There is a huge potential to create a culture of support and form a fitness community with people from around the world.
6. It ties in the next logical step to broaden the impact of preventative care of FB health. With half the worlds population loggin into the FB platform it makes sense to capitalize on it. People are aware of the importance of fitness and health. Users have acces to digital technology
7. The app can go live just before summer time when most people are trying to get into beach body shape and ready to shed of the excess winter weight that was hiding so well under the bulky sweaters.
8.  Measuring success for this app will be straight forward. We want to see a significant uptake in user engagement. Facebook makes $ through advertising. Increase in engagement in this app gives an option for lots of advertisers who are from the wedding industry,health wellness and life style industry to help capture a captivated audeince.
   1. # of new users added to FB in a 1 year period with 3 month cohorts.
   2. Increase in uptake of # of DAU after launch compared to before launch
   3. # of share of the app/ total shares of all apps
   4. Avg time spent by user on FB before Launch and After Launch
   5. # of Daily Active User in the APP
   6. # of Daily Active user in the fitness App/DAU in all Apps
   7. # of new Advertisers
   8. Total # of Revenue per cohort

10. Given the above analysis I will give a Go for the Fitness App. It ties with the FB vision to bring communities together and share and celebrate what matters most. FB is already in the preventative care space with Facebook Health and fitness app is aligned with the preventative health stance.