COVID-19 Information Hub: Team Goals, North-Star Metric and Guardrails
Company: Meta
Role: Product Manager
Category: Analytics & Experimentation
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You have just become the product manager for a COVID-19 information portal, a place people go for information about the pandemic. Set the goals for your team, and explain how you would measure progress against each one.
```hint Define a successful visit
Picture someone who opens the portal to find out where to get tested. What does a good outcome look like for them, and would a longer visit be good news or bad news?
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Who runs the portal: a public-health agency with a standalone website, or a large consumer platform that hosts an information hub inside its apps?
- What does it offer: case counts and trends, safety guidance, testing and vaccination locations, answers to common myths, or all of these?
- Which phase of the pandemic are we in? Early uncertainty, a testing push and a vaccine rollout each call for different goals.
- Is countering false claims that spread elsewhere on the platform part of the team's mandate?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A mission tied to a health outcome (people get accurate guidance and act on it), not traffic for its own sake.
- Goals that follow the user journey: reaching the people who need the information, helping them find a trustworthy answer quickly, and leading them to the right action.
- One primary metric per goal with a precise definition, plus guardrails for accuracy, freshness and reliability during traffic spikes.
- Awareness that engagement metrics cut both ways here, and segmentation by region, language and type of need.
- A clear priority among the goals and how it would shift as the pandemic enters a new phase.
### Follow-up Questions
- Average time on the portal doubled last month. How would you work out whether that is good news?
- National and local health authorities publish conflicting guidance on the same day. What does the portal show, and what do you measure?
- Leadership wants a single number on the dashboard. Which one would you choose, and what would you watch next to it?
Overview: A metrics and goal-setting prompt asking a PM candidate to define team goals for a COVID-19 information portal. It tests tying goals to health outcomes, choosing precise metrics for reach, findability and action, setting accuracy and freshness guardrails, and recognizing when engagement metrics mislead.