Design a product for child care.
Meta- Eva Richardson
I’ll apply my standard framework and then look forward to hearing your thoughts and refinements.
For product design questions, I always start by telling the interviewer how I’m going to tackle the question and then I generally stick to this framework:
- define / clarify the business objectives
- define 2-3 user types and select one to prioritize
- identify 2-3 user journeys and select one to solve
- design 3 solutions
- prioritize and recommend one solution
- summarize
So for this question I would start by asking clarifying questions. Here are some I might ask:
- Assuming that this is a product for the Facebook company, may I assume that we are talking about virtual solutions to child care, ie not about building brick and mortar care centers?
- Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together, so should I assume that this product can involve other people, in addition to the children being cared for virtually?
Then I would hone in on the business objectives:
- The product should fundamentally offer a mission-aligned solution, building communities and bringing the world closer together.
- Any child care offering should prioritize the physical and emotional safety of the child, first.
- We should also prioritize privacy and security, for example ensuring that child images, sounds, and their physical locations are secured.
Then I would define the key users and select one to prioritize:
- The children
- The parents
- Any virtual caregivers (assuming that we established that this will be a virtual care offering)
For this question, I will choose to focus on the parents as users.
Then I will define the key user journeys / user needs and select one to solution.
- The parents of the children want to ensure that their children are safe at all times (P0), they want to be able to check in at any time (P1), and they want to know that their children are learning and developing (P2).
Because safety is the top concern for the parents, I will focus on this user need as I design some solutions. Then, I will design 3 solutions.
- (tech-enabled virtual nanny service) Leveraging Facebook portal, we can develop a virtual nanny service which uses the Facebook Portal device to watch the children virtually. These nannies are responsible for identifying any safety issues in the environment, and their user-facing tools enable them to quickly alert the parents or emergency services if the child is ever in danger.
- (ML/AI nanny) Leveraging Facebook portal and FB’s core competencies in computer vision and machine learning for image and facial recognition, we can leverage ML/AI to (1) initially scan the physical childcare space for any areas needing improvement (ie sharp corners, chemical access, open windows), (2) identify accepted users to be in the room with the children (computer vision), and (3) during caregiving, identify any environmental changes which could introduce risk to the child (someone new entering the room who is not an established caregiver, a new chemical or item which introduces physical risk).
- (IOT++) We can develop a set of wearable and stationary IOT sensors that connect through the Facebook Portal device (or other devices). These sensors will use video, audio, chemical, thermal, and other sensors to detect any changes to the child’s environment that may introduce a safety risk. These risks can be automatically alerted to system-validated parents or caregivers, allowing for immediate response to any risks in the child’s environment.
Now, I will look at the complexity and user impact of each of these solutions to prioritize and recommend one.
- For the tech-enabled nanny service, there are many existing patterns that leverage vision systems and tech-enabled response tools (security officers at Target for example), so this solution is low technical complexity. However, running a large organization of virtual nannies is more complex from an operational perspective, and not necessarily a core compentency of Facebook, so I would ultimately rate complexity here as medium. The user impact is high as given that we are able to identify and quickly start a workflow to resolve child safety issues with virtual nanny monitoring.
- For the ML/AI nanny solution, the technical complexity is a bit higher than the manual nanny, but given that computer vision and facial recognition are core competencies of Facebook’s engineering team and the fact that this solution has low operational complexity, I would rank the complexity as low. The user impact is high here as well, for similar reasons.
- For the IOT solution, the user impact is highest because we are able to assess many more safety risks than just a vision and sound-based system (ie smoke or CO2 or thermal issues), but the technical complexity is highest, plus time to market for this solution will be much longer, as we will need to build connected hardware solutions.
To get this child safety product off the ground, I would opt to lean in to our core competencies and the existing footprint with the Facebook Portal system. I would recommend that we develop an ML/AI powered safety monitor and satisfy the #1 need of parents leveraging virtual childcare: proactively identifying any risks to the safety of their child.