Step 1: Describe the feature

• FB crisis response is a feature that enables users to mark themselves as safe during a crisis so that their friends/family are aware and don’t panic.
• FB identifies locations hit by the crisis and sends alerts to the user’s feed.
• The user can mark themselves as safe which is shared within their network.
• The folks in the network get to see that their friend has marked safe and react to that
• The feature also allows users to provide or find help during a crisis.

 

Step 2: Ask clarifying questions

Now that we are clear about what this feature does, let’s ensure that we scope the problem properly.

• Assuming that we are considering all platforms – mobile and web
• Assuming that we are considering all geographies
• Assuming that we need to set the goals at the time of launch

 

Step 3: Define goals

Now that we are clear about what this feature does and the scope of the problem,  we need to define why this feature was built in the first place, who benefits from this and how does it help Facebook.

 

There are multiple user segments that are involved

• Affected person: Their goals are to let the network know so they are assured their loved ones are not panicking. Also, find help quickly.
• Friends and family: Their goal is to get a quick update on well being of their loved ones

 

For the problem, I’m assuming that Friends and family are our primary target segment as that group is much larger in number. So, we will focus on the user goals of Friends and family.

 

FB Goal:

• FB’s mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. This feature fits in well to drive FB’s mission forward.
• As FB, I would care about engagement on this feature as that itself helps achieve users’ goals.

 

Step 4: Define Journey

1) User discovers the alert on his feed

2) User marks himself as safe

3) The alert is sent to users in the network who discover their people are safe.

4) Friends and family engage further, liking, commenting, and reacting to the feed item.

 

Step 5: Define metrics

No. of crisis for which alerts activated

No. of users/ crisis to whom alerts were sent

No. of impressions/crisis alert

% marked as safe

% marked as doesn’t apply

No. of like-comments-reactions/crisis feed item

 

Step 6: Define the north star

The metric that I would consider as a north star for this product is No. of like-comment-reaction/feed item. If this metric is healthy, then I know we are doing good to achieve our user goals.

Before I talk about goals let me briefly talk about the FB crisis feature and its goal. This is necessary to answer this Facebook execution question.

FB crisis feature: FB crisis response is a feature where one can find important information anout a recent crisis, use safety check feature to mark themselves safe and communicate and connect with friends and loved ones during crisis. The feature also allows victimes of crisis to request for help, resources.Volunteers can give help and also raise money through fundraisers.

Goal: Goal of this feature is to help the victims of crisis connect with their family and loved ones during crisis.During crisis e911 systems are already ovewhelemed and FB can provide an utility to further request for help, offer help or connect with loved ones. FB’s goal is to empower people to build communities and help them connect together. With this feature, FB is leveraging its social platform to check on loved ones during crisis and help them connect.In doing so FB hopes that users will use the platform to engage more  during the crisis.

Users of the feature:

Below are the 3 users of the feature.

1.Victims of crisis : FB users who are victims during the crisis.

2.Family and friends of victims : Family of victims who would like to know if their loved ones are safe during the crisis

3.Volunteers : Volunteers as well as non-profits involved with relief efforts

User Journey

1.During the crisis, FB will send a notification to the user to mark themselves as safe. If they click “I am safe” option then it gets posted on their newsfeed and their friends and family can see the post.

2. Alternatively, users can go to FB crisis page on FB and activate this feature.

3. User can call E911 from this page and request for help.

4. User can request for help/resourses by posting a message and his/her network gets notified.Volunteers can respond back and offer help.

4. Volunteers can raise fundraisers and share with their network.

We would like to track metrics associated with this user journey during a crisis.

Activation

1. % of FB users who marked themselves safe during crisis.(H,H)This can further be tracked as 

• % of users who went to FB crisis page and activated the feature from there.
• % of FB users who activated it from the notification shown by FB. If this is low then maybe FB is not targeting the right users as their profile info may not be not updated with the current location. FB may need to notify users to update their location at some pint of time

2. % of crisis users (from above) users who requested E911 call (H,H)

3. % of crisis users (from above) who requested for help/resources through a message (H,H)

4. Number of fundraisers started as a result of the crisis (M,M)

 

Engagement of feature

1. Avg no of interactions between the victims and their connections. The hope is that if the feature is useful then there will be more engagement with the user during the crisis.

• Avg no of posts/user (H,H)
• Avg no of comments/reactions/shares/ user (H,H)
• Avg no of direct messages exchanged with the victims (H,H)
• Avg no of calls made through messenger (H,H)

2. Avg no of users requesting for help/resources (H,H)

3. Out of the users requesting for resources, % of users that got a response from volunteers.If this is high then indeed victims are able to connect with volunteers and vice-versa. (H,H)

4. Avg number of fundraisers created (M,M)

5. Avg number of comments/shares/ fundrasiers (M,M)

6. Avg money raised/fundraiser (M,M)

7. Average duration spend/user on FB as a result of the crisis. The hope is that this number would increase if the loved ones are communicating through FB (M,H)

8. Average duration spent on messenger as a result of this feature (M,H)

 

Retention

1. Avg no of repated logins by the victims, their loved ones , and volunteers during the crisis(H,H)

 

I would like to priortize these metrics based on impact to user and impact to FB. The most important goal of this feature is to help connect victims to their loved ones during crisis. Thus I will like to priortize the metrics with H,H above as the sucess metrics for this feature. These metrics track the usage of this feature and traction gained from volunteers to help the victims.