Make Facebook's crisis Safety Check tool more valuable during disasters
Company: Meta
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Meta working on Facebook's Safety Check. Safety Check is the feature used during events such as natural disasters, attacks or major accidents: people in the affected area are asked whether they are safe, and their answer is shared with their friends. How would you improve it?
```hint Pick a person and a moment
The same crisis looks very different to someone in danger, someone who is fine, and a relative far away. Choose one of them and one point in the event's timeline where today's flow lets them down.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- What should the improvement achieve: reaching more people in affected areas, getting help to people faster, or giving worried friends and family better information?
- Which part of the flow is in scope: deciding when and where an event is activated, the prompt to people in the area, the updates friends receive, or the tools for asking for and offering help?
- Can the change extend beyond the Facebook app, for example to Messenger, WhatsApp or text messages for people with weak connectivity?
- Are there limits on how location data may be used to decide who counts as being in the affected area?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A goal grounded in what Safety Check is for during an emergency, rather than generic engagement.
- A breakdown of the people involved in a crisis and a reasoned choice of whom to serve first.
- Pain points specific to emergencies, such as weak connectivity, wrong activation, privacy of distress and finding the right help.
- Prioritized solutions that account for what happens when the product is wrong or misused.
- Success metrics with guardrails, and a realistic way to evaluate a feature that is only used during crises.
### Follow-up Questions
- Someone in the affected area never answers the prompt. Should their friends see anything, and what could go wrong either way?
- An event is activated for a whole city although only a few neighborhoods are affected. What would you change, and what does each kind of error cost?
- How would you stop scammers from exploiting help requests or crisis fundraisers?
Overview: A product improvement question about Facebook Safety Check, the feature people use during disasters to tell friends they are safe. It tests setting a goal, choosing a user segment, finding crisis-specific pain points, prioritizing solutions and defining success metrics with safety guardrails.